Iran makes a mockery of the UN...

Time for a Council of Democracies...

The United Nations has just created a new "entity" on women's rights, called U.N. Women. Elections to its governing board are now being organized. How long before Iran wins a seat?

If the question sounds absurd, the realities at the U.N. are even more mind-bending. The most recent high-profile outrage on this score was Iran gaining a seat in April on the U.N.'s Commission on the Status of Women. But that's the least of it. The reality is that Iran, despite being under four sets of binding sanctions resolutions by the U.N. Security Council, has learned to manipulate the institution in ways that make a mockery not only of the U.N. itself, but also of U.S. claims of diplomatic competence.

Rarely remarked upon, but even more appalling than Iran's beachhead on the women's rights commission, is Iran's seat on the 36-member executive board of the U.N.'s flagship agency, the U.N. Development Program, headquartered in New York. Iran actually chaired the UNDP executive board last year, during the thick of the bloody protests in which Teheran's mullocracy was beating, jailing and killing protesters calling for democratic development in Iran.

That same UNDP executive board, with Iran still in its lineup today, also serves as the governing body for the U.N. population fund (UNFPA) and the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Iran's three-year term on the UNDP board expires at the end of 2010. But have no fear that Iran will be shut out of U.N. high councils on the status of women--or, for that matter, issues involving children and food aid. The newly created entity, U.N. Women, with or without Iran on its board, will be holding joint meetings with the executive boards not only of the UNDP, but also of the New York-based U.N. children's agency (UNICEF) and the Rome-based World Food Program (WFP). Iran sits on the boards of both UNICEF and the WFP, where its terms extend, respectively, through the end of 2011 and 2012.

Iran also fields a hefty presence among the governing councils of U.N. outfits involved in matters germane to weapons, outer space and global crime. Through 2012 Iran--the world's leading terrorist-sponsoring state--is a vice chair of the Executive Council of the U.N.'s Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Iran sits on two major commissions of the Vienna-based U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), including the UNODC's 20-member Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, where in 2009 it won a three-year-term. And this past April Iran won a seat with a four-year term on the U.N.'s Geneva-based Commission on Science and Technology for Development--never mind its brazen violations of U.N. sanctions on its rogue nuclear program.