Condi's Collision Course with the UN.

With Condi currently leading the US's insane charge through the United Nations - a charge that seems doomed to end in failure - as neither the Russians nor the Chinese will approve sanctions, it's worth bearing a few things in mind before we get to "Well, if we can't impose sanctions we'd better hit them" stage.

1. Iran is ten years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. So the US are flat wrong when they keep implying an imminent threat.
   
2. Iran says they don't want a nuclear weapon. Indeed, Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei, say they do not want an atomic bomb because it is "Islamically immoral".
3. Everything Iran are currently doing is allowed under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
4. Iran, unlike North Korea, have not withdrawn from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
5. Iran, under the terms of the treaty, allows inspections of it's nuclear facilities - precisely to prove that it is not building a nuclear weapon.
6. The US has withdrawn from a nuclear inspections treaty.

I notice Bolton is now making calls for an article 7 resolution, which is really taking us all a step closer to war - when there is absolutely no need for us to be talking about war at this stage - and without any proof, of any kind, that Iraq is not in compliance with her obligations under international law.

There's talk that the US war plans are already under way.

The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has been conducting theater campaign analysis for a full scale war with Iran since at least May 2003, responding to Pentagon directions to prepare for potential operations in the "near term."

The campaign analysis, called TIRANNT, for "theater Iran near term," posits an Iraq-like maneuver war between U.S. and Iranian ground forces and incorporates lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In addition to the TIRANNT effort and the Marine Corps Karona invasion scenario, the military has also completed an analysis of Iran's missile force (the "BMD-I" study), the Defense Intelligence Agency has updated "threat data" for Iranian forces, and Air Force planners have modeled attacks against "real world" Iranian air defenses and targets to establish new metrics. What is more, the United States and Britain have been conducting war games and contingency planning under a Caspian Sea scenario that could also pave the way for northern operations against Iran.

This has not gone down well with the Russians, who are opposed to sanctions, never mind military action.

"If such plans exist, they will not be able to solve this problem," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, according to Russian news agencies. "On the contrary, they could create a dangerous, explosive blaze in the Middle East, where there are already enough blazes."

It would appear that Condi and Bolton are on a collision course with most of the rest of the world.

As with Iraq, they appear to approach the UN without understanding what the UN is for. For the UN war can only ever be a case of last resort. That's the very reason it was formed post WWII. The US seem to see it some sort of passageway to legitimacy for their wars of aggression and seem genuinely baffled when the UN refuses to rubber stamp these aggresive acts.

Prepare for the next phase of this march to insanity when Condi, Bolton and others start asking, "What is the UN good for?"

This will highlight the US's misinterpretation of the UN's function rather than any intrinsic problem with the UN itself.

Tags: UN, US, Iran, Security Council, Sanctions, Condi, Bush, Bolton, war,