The UN and Iran: here we go again! An influential U.S. senator has urged the UN Security Council to impose strict sanctions on Iran. As in Iraq, if the UN acts, Americans will pay the freight in blood and money.

A January 30 report posted on channelnewsasia.com was headlined "US and EU try to convince Russia on Iranian nuclear programme." The report stated: "The United States sought to convince Russia and China to back UN action [against Iran]." Continuing, it read: "The United States and the EU fear Iran is using a nuclear programme it says is peaceful to hide secret atomic weapons development."

Another report from AFP, posted on Yahoo News on January 29, was headlined, "Iran renews threat, appeals for more nuclear talks." It stated: "On [January 26] the IAEA's [International Atomic Energy Agency] 35-nation board of governors will consider arguments from the European powers and the United States that Iran must be sent to the Security Council for resuming uranium enrichment research."

The situation in Iran is beginning to sound much like the standoff between the UN--and the UN's chief enforcement arm, the United States--and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

These reports raise two basic questions: 1) Is Iran working to build nuclear weapons? 2) Who, if anyone, should be charged with doing something about it?

Hold on a Minute!

Suppose, for the moment, that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Though the nation may be ruled by a regime we find unpalatable, it is still a sovereign state. If a tyrannical form of government, plus nuclear weapons development, equals justification for military intervention, why attack Iran? Don't China and North Korea also fall into the same category?

Stretching the hypothesis even further, if something is to be done to stop Iran's "weapons of mass destruction" development, who should stop them? The United States? Israel? The United Nations? If the crisis in Iran follows the pattern of the recent one in Iraq, the UN will become the designated "peacekeeper," and the United States will pay the bill in blood and money.

Since the founding of the UN in 1945, the use of U.S. troops to enforce UN "police actions" or "peacekeeping operations" has resulted in large numbers of U.S. casualties wasted in no-win military ventures. The Korean War (officially a "police action") was of course waged under UN direction. Less known is the fact that the legal basis for our involvement in Vietnam was the SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) collective defense treaty. Like NATO, SEATO was a regional subsidiary of the United Nations.

Closer to our own time, the U.S. sent troops to Somalia as part of a UN-authorized operation. The first President Bush announced on December 4, 1992 that he was offering the United Nations 30,000 American troops for the "humanitarian" mission that would be known as Operation Restore Hope. Anyone who has seen the film Blackhawk Down is aware of the hopeless quagmire into which our troops were thrust.

Then there is Iraq. On November 29, 1990, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq if Saddam Hussein did not pull his troops out of Kuwait by January 15, 1991. On February 27, 1991, 100 hours after the Operation Desert Storm ground offensive began, the elder President Bush announced that the allied forces had won an overwhelming military victory in the Persian Gulf War and would immediately suspend all offensive combat operations.

"Kuwait is liberated," said the elder Mr. Bush. "Iraq's army is defeated. Our military objectives are met." More revealing, the president declared: "This is a victory for the United Nations, for all mankind, for the rule of law, and for what is right." Many Americans wondered why U.S. troops stopped short of Baghdad during that war. It was because our troops were fighting under a UN mandate that limited our objectives. Not surprisingly, the incomplete resolution of Iraq War I led to Iraq War II. Initially, however, there was little enthusiasm among Western nations, including the United States, for another invasion. The Bush administration had to engage in an ever-escalating war of words and saber rattling, threatening Saddam Hussein with removal if he did not dismantle a prescribed list of missiles and other "weapons of mass destruction."

The administration gave the American people the impression that the UN was remiss in its obligations to disarm and/or remove Saddam, and that, if necessary, the United States would "go it alone" in Iraq. This approach softened up opposition to the invasion from the American public. Most Americans want our nation to assert its sovereignty, not submit it to UN authority. Amazingly, many Americans viewed our invasion of Iraq--"Operation Iraqi Freedom"--as a declaration of independence from the UN, when exactly the opposite was true!

UN Directives

The principal reason given by President George W. Bush for invading Iraq was Saddam's defiance of UN disarmament resolutions. "We have passed more than a dozen resolutions in the United Nations Security Council," explained the president in his March 17, 2003 speech. "The Iraqi regime ... has uniformly defied Security Council resolutions demanding full disarmament." In the same speech, he added, "Under [Security Council] Resolutions 678 and 687--both still in effect--the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction."

On November 8, 2002, the day that the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1441, President Bush stated: "America will be making only one determination: Is Iraq meeting the terms of the [United Nations] Security Council resolution or not? ... If Iraq fails to fully comply, the United States and other nations will disarm Saddam Hussein."

The following spring, on March 20, 2003, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte sent a letter to the president of the Security Council informing the council of the start of the invasion: "Coalition forces have commenced military operations in Iraq. These operations are necessary in view of Iraq's continued material breaches of its disarmament obligations under relevant Security Council resolutions, including 1441 (2002). The operations are substantial and will secure compliance with those obligations."

It is interesting that, as meticulous as the Bush administration was to comply with UN "obligations," it did not comply with the requirement stated in the U.S. Constitution that only Congress has the power to declare war.

Iraq All Over Again

Now we have begun to hear language uttered in reference to Iran that is very similar to that used to initiate UN resolutions against Iraq--so that Iraq could later be invaded for violating those resolutions. An AP story on February 6 noted that on that day U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "urged the Security Council ... to impose strict sanctions on Iran if it fails to comply with U.N. resolutions and arms agreements and warned that inaction would greatly increase the chances of military conflict."

It is worth recalling that Lugar has been an apologist for military intervention in the Middle East since the first Bush administration. At a November 10, 1990 "Citizens Forum" held in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Senator Lugar delivered the closing address. Standing beneath a banner displaying the forum's theme, "America's Role in the New World Order," Lugar praised President George H.W. Bush's initiative in confronting Saddam Hussein. "Mikhail Gorbachev wasn't picking up the phone to call anybody, nor was Mitterand of France, or even Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain," said Lugar. "It was George Bush calling up everybody. He put it together. He activated the UN."

As we saw during the events leading up to the second invasion of Iraq, the apple has not fallen far from the Bush. Once again, the internationalists, who are determined that no nation shall have the wherewithal to defy the UN, are flexing their muscles. They are methodically following a blueprint outlined in the 1961 State Department document Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World. Among the points presented in that document, which was presented to the United Nations by President John F. Kennedy, were "the elimination from national arsenals of all armaments, including all weapons of mass destruction and the means for their delivery, other than those required for a United Nations Peace Force and for maintaining internal order."

What President John Kennedy presented to the UN in theory is being accomplished by President George Bush in fact: making the military resources of the United States available to the UN, as a means of enforcing UN authority over all nations of the world that defy UN hegemony. Under such a plan, it does not matter if weapons of mass destruction actually exist or not; they are not the point. The point is that any pretext is sufficient to wage war as a means of empowering the UN and bringing all regimes into the new world order.

In the long term, the world may have more to fear from UN-led "peacekeeping" forces than it does from Iraqi and Iranian rulers. Remember: Middle Eastern tyrants rule but one small corner of the world--the internationalists behind the UN want to rule the entire world.

The United States is the engine that powers the UN. The most effective way to prevent UN hegemony is to withdraw the U.S. from the UN, effectively cutting off its military and economic strength.