Iran: Here we go again

asiatimes: Security Council presidential statements are non-binding. But despite the toothless nature of the one under consideration at United Nations headquarters this week, it's a slippery slope. The current US administration has a record of seeing a mandate where no one else can, and the gnomic comments of its members, refusing to exclude any possibilities and hinting at unilateral action if the UN fails to satisfy, should send chills down anyone's spine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put his finger on it last week when he talked about a sense of deja vu, referring to his time as ambassador when the US was trying to push the other members of the Security Council into authorizing an attack on Iraq for allegedly having weapons of mass destruction. Now the UN is being invited to another Snark hunt, this time to authorize action against the future possibility of nuclear weapons, since not even the US Central Intelligence Agency has been elbow-twisted into manufacturing evidence of a proximate threat. There is no doubt that the United States is trying to enlist the world into a crusade of sorts against Iran, which is all the more worrying since the outcome of this diplomatic campaign is so vague. Both the US and Israel are hinting at military strikes, and then burst into indignation when an Iranian delegate of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) threatened "harm and pain" if they try. Read more