Iran's expulsion would leave vacant the Vice-Chairmanship of the UN Disarmament Commission.
As Iran continues to defy the international community by building its nuclear program and making incendiary threats against Israel, one organization is fighting back against Iran. But instead of using improvised explosive devices, it is using international law.
On September 12th, the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) initiated a campaign to have Iran expelled from the United Nations. The JCPA argues that Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear program and its threat to wipe Israel off the map constitute a violation of the UN Charter and are thus grounds for its expulsion.
Dore Gold, President of the JCPA and former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, argues there is a precedent for such a move, citing the case of South Africa. Indeed, in November 1974, South Africa was suspended by the UN General Assembly for its apartheid policies. It should be noted that South Africa remained a member of the UN and continued to participate in UN agencies. However, it was not welcomed back into the UN General Assembly until 1994 when the first multi-racial elections were held in South Africa.
Gold has enlisted an All-Star team of support including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel; Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz; Irwin Cotler, Canadian Member of Parliament and former Minister of Justice; and Meir Rosenne, who served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 1987.
I wish Dore Gold well with his endeavor and hope the UN will heed his appeal and expel Iran from the United Nations.
But I am not holding my breath.
Dore Gold is a decent man. I saw him give a lecture at Harvard University in December 2004, spoke with him briefly and wrote a column about this experience. Although Gold is a strong critic of the UN he nonetheless believes in its original purpose and principles. He believed that my suggestion that Israel withdraw from the UN would do the Jewish state more harm than good.
No doubt these same principles inspire this effort to rid the UN of Iran. However, this campaign rests on two presumptions. First, that the UN is a worthy organization; and second, that the UN is worthy of being saved.
Even though it is developing a nuclear program and is threatening the existence of Israel, at the present time Iran is held in higher esteem than Israel at the UN. A United Nations that holds Iran in higher esteem than Israel is not worthy of being saved let alone worthy of anything.
Don’t believe me when I say Iran is looked upon with greater esteem than Israel at the UN?
Let us remember that former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami spent the past two weeks in the United States. The principal reason Khatami came to America was to meet with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and to attend the meeting of the High Level Group of the Alliance of Civilizations. The Alliance of Civilizations was an initiative proposed by Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (the one who withdrew troops from Iraq after the Madrid train bombings) and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Edrogan. The purpose of the Alliance is to promote dialogue between Western and Islamic cultures and to combat global extremism (although it does not define who the extremists are).
Kofi Annan appointed Khatami along with nineteen others to the High Level Group to formulate ideas that will ultimately be submitted back to Annan (or possibly his successor) in the form of a report by the end of 2006. Other members in the High Level Group include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, controversial Islamic scholar John Esposito of Georgetown University, and equally controversial religious writer Karen Armstrong. Khatami praised Hezbollah during his speech at the Kennedy School of Government on September 10th. Tutu likened the State of Israel to “Hitler and Apartheid” in April 2002. In 1994, Esposito considered Hamas little more than a group that partook in “honey, cheese-making, and home-based clothing manufacture.” For her part, Armstrong has justified the actions of Palestinian suicide bombers. “Palestinians don’t have F-16s, and they don’t have tanks. They don’t have anything to match Israel’s arsenal. They only have their own bodies,” said Armstrong.
Wow! Some group. If this is Kofi Annan’s idea of a high level group he could not have scraped further from the bottom of the barrel. To think that Khatami and company were chosen to come up with ways to assess “new and emerging threats to international peace and security, in particular the political, social and religious forces that foment extremism.” Somehow I don’t think Hamas and Hezbollah are going to be named amongst the forces that foment extremism.
It is also worth remembering that it was only this past April that Iran was elected to the vice-chairmanship of the UN Disarmament Commission.
That’s right! The UN Disarmament Commission.
If Iran can be elected to the UN Disarmament Commission, what makes Dore Gold think that Iran will be expelled, let alone suspended from the UN?
Again going back to the South Africa example, it is worth noting that South Africa was suspended by the General Assembly though not from the UN altogether. Expulsion from the UN requires approval of the Security Council under the auspices of Article 6 of the UN Charter. When the proposal to expel South Africa came before the Security Council, France, Great Britain and the United States vetoed the measure so it was left to the General Assembly to take action.
Although the UN Security Council did condemn Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remarks concerning the Holocaust in December 2005, one wonders if either Russia or China would be inclined to veto a measure that would expel Iran from the UN. It is worth noting that Pravda has reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin, while publicly opposing sanctions against Iran, took the Islamic Republic to task for its threats towards Israel, albeit indirectly:
In that sense, they don’t differ from Brazil or South Africa. But we must understand that neither Brazil, nor South Africa are setting the goal to destroy another state and are writing about it in their constitutions. Regrettably, the Iranian leaders are talking publicly about it, and that doesn’t help international security or the foreign policy of the Iranian state itself.
Despite this admonition from Putin, if Russia is unwilling to vote for sanctions against Iran at the Security Council it certainly will not support its expulsion from the UN altogether. As for the General Assembly, it would be even less inclined to merely suspend Iran, given that Israel would be seen as the chief beneficiary of such a move and there is certainly no love lost between Israel and rest of the General Assembly.
Don’t get me wrong here. I think Gold is making a noble effort here and support his actions. If nothing else, it might draw more public attention to Iran’s actions and intentions and some pressure might be brought to bear. Yet I believe this effort will be in vain. In order for Gold to have initiated such a campaign he has to believe that the UN has a shred of decency. I have no such illusions. As long as the UN Secretary General is willing to name a former Iranian President to a High Level Group then Iran will not be expelled from the UN. As long as the UN Disarmament Commission is prepared to elect Iran to be a vice-chair of that body then Iran will not be suspended from the UN.
The only way such an initiative will work is if there are consequences if the UN doesn’t act. Clifford May, of the Alliance for the Defense of Democracies, wrote on National Review Online’s Corner on September 13th that if Iran isn’t expelled from the UN that Congress should cut off its funding. That would certainly cripple the UN. Although the current Congress is not particularly sympathetic to the UN it is highly unlikely such a measure would ever see the light of day, especially in the U.S. Senate. The UN has nothing compelling it to act on Gold’s proposals.
Something must be done about Iran’s nuclear program and its threats towards Israel. Just don’t count on the UN to do something.
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Read more articles by Aaron Goldstein
Here's an idea. Close down the U.N. Then the U.S., Britain, and Isreal could create their own union with any other country that supports freedom and will help fight terrorists. The rest of the world can have their union , perhaps in France,payed for with their own money. Then we would know where to look for the real problem.
Comment by Vic Holifield | September 16, 2006