SEP. 22, 2004: THE WORDS UNSAID
David Frum - NRO
Lovely speech by the president to the UN – but a question. What happened to the Iran paragraph? Just three days ago, the Iranian government formally defied the International Atomic Energy Authority. Breaking promises made as recently as October 2003, Iran will continue to move to enrich uranium – a process that can only be intended for weapons.
By its own rules, the IAEA is now bound to lay the problem before the Security Council. It is perfectly possible of course that the IAEA may shrug the matter off. But to give the agency its due, current director Muhammad el Baradei seems made of tougher stuff than his Swedish predecessor, Hans Blix. But whether el Baradei does his duty or not, this problem will be arriving at the Security Council very shortly.
So shouldn’t President Bush have said something about it? Given some public indication of the stance the US will take – and of its expectations of the world community? The president touched on many subjects of interest to the United States, but the looming threat of nuclearization in Iran and the very horrible likelihood that North Korea has already nuclearized surely top the list?
About North Korea there may have been very little the Bush administration could ever have done. Thanks to years of cheating on earlier agreements with the United States, North Korea had almost certainly reached the nuclear threshold by the time Bush camem to office. His main policy choice at that point was whether to sign another phoney deal – this time one that paid North Korea to pretend not to be a nuclear state – or else to isolate North Korea and exact consequences from North Korea and its Chinese patrons.
If North Korea did indeed test a nuclear bomb this weekend, as the IAEA has said North Korea may have done, then the consequences have to begin now: including potentially the acceptance of a South Korean nuclear bomb and further rearmament by Japan and Taiwan. China may not have wished North Korea to go nuclear, but only China could have prevented it – and China chose not to. If Northeast Asia is to become a more dangerous place, China should face some of those new dangers itself.
But there is still time to stop Iran. And the world community is at least theoretically pledged to try. As usual, many countries – including unfortunately some of the European allies – are disposed to shrug the threat off and hope for the best. Some of those allies, even the UN Secretary General, have complained that the US did not give enough heed to UN procedures on Iraq. OK then: Let’s see how they follow UN procedures on Iran. The UN speech presented an opportunity to remind those allies of their danger – and their obligations. Why didn’t the president make use of it?
08:51 AM
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