Merry Christmas to Iran!

Merry Christmas, all. Our Christmas gift from the international relations realm this year:

Multi-lateral sanctions on Iran!

An interesting thing I wanted to bring out with the adoption of these sanctions is how they actually indicate the waning global hegemony of the United States and their reluctance to diverge from the multilateral from here on in. The rhetoric present only a little while back – veiled threats of a pre-emptive Iranian invasion interspersed with the word ‘evil’ (granted, by Bolton) – is gone, replaced by statements like the one given by acting UN ambassador Alejandro Wolff yesterday. He timidly whimpered that

"If necessary, [the United States] will not hesitate to return to this body if Iran does not take further steps to comply”

“We will not hesitate to return to this body”? What happened to all options are on the table, even military action? What happened to the axis of evil? What kind of global hegemony is the United States becoming?

The next year will be one in which nuclear weapons proliferation takes centre stage – Iran and North Korea certainly don’t look ready to back down any time soon. As soon as the sanctions were approved, Iran said it would immediately begin installing 3,000 centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. If anything, we may have persuaded Iran that there is no option but to develop nuclear weapons under the stifling of their ambitions by the world community. The possibility of talks between the West and Iran have just dramatically dropped, and as a result this will certainly be an interesting (and dangerous) year for the world.

And, because its always so hard to find and never linked to by the BBC, here are the links to the full text of Resolution 1737 and the list of materials being withheld from Iran.