If Israel had wanted to torpedo the fourth round of UN nuclear sanctions against Iran, accelerate Iran’s weaponization efforts, and hasten the day when Tel Aviv will face a second nuclear-armed hostile Islamic state, it could have done no better than attack the Gaza convoy and kill anti-blockade activists.
The UN Security Council was scheduled to vote on the sanctions this week, Hillary Clinton’s team having brought China and Russia on board two weeks ago, in a diplomatic tour de force.
Those stiff draft sanctions were agreed upon by the permanent members of the Security Council over the stiff objections of Brazil and Turkey, which at the eleventh hour resuscitated a deal calling for Iran to ship some of its enriched uranium outside the country, to be exchanged at a later date for more highly enriched uranium.
Turkey, already thoroughly annoyed by the draft sanctions and finding wide support for its position among Group of 77 nations in the General Assembly, now has all the more reason to be furious and good reason to expect Group of 77 sympathy for its go-soft-on-Iran line to be still stronger.
As luck would have it–and it really is lucky for Israel–the Iran sanctions may hold, despite the raid and, basically, because the United States appears to have distanced itself enough from the Netanyahu government to hold its Security Council allies in line. Though the U.S. delegation did work last night to somewhat weaken the council’s resolution, in the end Washington joined the council in condemning the raid, demanding a credible, impartial investigation, and calling for an end to the “unsustainable” blockade of Gaza.
John Holmes, UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, told Radio Australia that the United Nations has been asking Israel to end the blockade for several years. “The fact is most goods are not allowed in for the moment and that’s why we’ve seen these attempts to run the blockade. . . . And it’s just a terrible waste of life.”
It also was good luck for Israel that the IAEA happened to report, just as news of the unfortunate raid was breaking, that Iran probably now has enough partially enriched uranium to provide the fissile material for two nuclear weapons. According to The New York Times’s account of the confidential report, it “describes, step by step, how inspectors have been denied access to a series of facilities, and how Iran has refused to answer inspectors’ questions on a variety of activities, including what the agency called the ‘possible existence’ of ‘activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.’ “
That, together with the support the U.S. delegation gave the stern Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli raid, should be enough for the United States to secure an affirmative vote on Iran sanctions from the council later this week.
