𝚟𝚎𝚍𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢.

I’m furious. Blindingly furious. In fact, blindingly furious doesn’t cover it. On Wednesday, the Islamic Republic of Iran was elected to the United Nations’ Committee for Programme and Coordination, the 34-member body that oversees how the UN delivers its programmes, from human rights and women’s rights to counterterrorism. Yes, really. The world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism now has a hand in reviewing the UN’s counterterrorism operations, and a regime that hangs dissidents from cranes will help to scrutinise its work on human rights. America, Canada and Australia explicitly voted against the move. “The committee should not seat a regime that silences dissent and fuels regional instability,” said Canada’s foreign minister, Anita Anand. Australia’s Penny Wong said Iran’s conduct “undermines multilateralism”. Ed Miliband, by contrast, had already approved Iran’s candidacy back in April. According to the Foreign Office, its hands were tied. Iran had been put forward by the UN’s Asia-Pacific group, alongside India, Japan and Pakistan, and Hamish Falconer, the Middle East minister, described the nomination as an “automaticity”. Chris Elmore, another minister, insisted that Britain could not have blocked it. Really? Then how did the Americans, Canadians and Australians manage to stand up and be counted? Nobody was asking Britain to perform a miracle. We were being asked to do the bare minimum: to say, out loud, that a regime which has spent the past four years trying to murder people on British soil has no business sitting in judgement on anybody’s counterterrorism programme. The Foreign Office couldn’t even manage that. Let’s consider what Tehran has been up to... New post. Link in first reply