Guess which country chairs the UN Development Program???

That lovely state - Iran....

To chair the 2009 governing board of the U.N.'s flagship agency, the multibillion-dollar globe-girdling United Nations Development Program, dedicated to promoting good governance and ending poverty, the U.N. has now picked--wait for it--the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This decision--reached last Friday--has escaped public notice, perhaps because the UNDP has neglected to advertise the news, or maybe because the world is too busy watching in Gaza the latest product of Iran's terrorist development programs in the Middle East.

But handing Iran the gavel of the UNDP executive board ranks right up there with the U.N.'s choice in 2003 of Libya to head the old Human Rights Commission, or Zimbabwe in 2007 to chair the Commission on Sustainable Development.

Except in some ways it's worse. For U.N.-sanctioned Iran, which last fall lost its brazen bid for a seat on the U.N. Security Council, this UNDP chairmanship is the next step in a creeping campaign for diplomatic influence and legitimacy at the U.N. via seats on the boards of the U.N.'s alphabet agencies--from UNICEF, to the United Nations Environment Program, to the World Food Program and beyond.

When I wrote about this pattern in December, Iran had just secured itself a three-year seat on the 36-member UNDP board. Now Tehran has been promoted to running the show.