The halls of the UN are a habitual stage for empty gestures and vaporous rhetoric, but last Friday’s Security Council vote was a dangerous theatre of the absurd – and one in which two American allies played ignominious supporting roles.
The Council not only rejected the Trump administration’s proposal to extend Resolution 2231, which restricts conventional arms sales to the rogue regime in Iran. Britain and France both abstained.
Why are Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron signalling that the pressure is off, the coast is clear, and the mullahs are free to arm themselves with the kind of advanced Chinese and Russian weaponry that would alter the balance of power in Asia and the Middle East – an alteration that would come at the expense of the European powers as well as the United States?
When I spoke with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday afternoon, he was preparing to go once more unto the diplomatic breach on Thursday, to again request the extension of Resolution 2231.
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