Obama’s fetish for multilateralism and nuclear nonproliferation reached the inevitable and farcical result that any policy which ascribes good motives to evil regimes must. Obama — if we take him at his word — suggests that multilateral institutions like the UN and paper agreements among democratic regimes will have an impact on the Iranian regime’s quest for nuclear weapons. But neither those institutions or those scraps of paper are up to the task. Rather, they provide ample room for the mullahs and their genocide-cheering president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to run circles around the Obami. As Bret Stephens notes of the UN:
As for the effect of the administration’s gesture politics, it probably hasn’t been what Mr. Obama envisioned. A biting U.N. sanctions resolution on Iran is nowhere in sight. The regime’s nuclear bids proceed undeterred. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt are openly entertaining doubts about U.S. seriousness—while entertaining nuclear futures of their own.
[I]t turns out that when it comes to a U.N. beauty contest, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad beats Barack Obama every time. Twenty-four countries walked out of Ahmadinejad’s speech yesterday. Another 168 remained in their seats, including those virtuous Scandinavians.
And of course the administration contributes to the mullahs’ aura of legitimacy and to Israel’s pariah status in that august body by remaining silent as Iran joins UN bodies without U.S. objection and Obama entertains the possibility of an abstention on a resolution that would vilify Israel for building homes in its capital.
When it comes to the NPT, once again, Iran seems to get the better of the deal:
Now Iran, in connivance with the usual Middle Eastern suspects (and their useful idiots in the West), is trying to use the NPT as a cudgel to force Israel to disarm. That makes perfect sense if you subscribe, as Mr. Obama does, to the theology of nuclear disarmament. It makes no sense if you think the distinction that matters when it comes to nuclear weapons is between responsible, democratic states, and reckless, unstable and dictatorial ones. Nobody lies awake at night wondering what David Cameron might do if he gets his finger on the U.K.’s nuclear trigger.
There is no mystery as to why our Iran policy is in disarray. It is what happens when we cast off the instruments of American power, place faith in international bodies that don’t share common interests or values, and assume our adversaries will respond to grand gestures and acts of goodwill.
