Repeat Performance

We've taken Axis nations to task before:

America will tomorrow demand that the United Nations takes urgent action to prevent Iran acquiring the atom bomb as fears mount that Teheran is on course to develop a nuclear weapons capability within two years.

United States officials will make the demand at a special meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna that has been arranged to consider a 10-page report by Mohammed al-Baradei, the agency's director-general, into the state of Iran's nuclear programme.


And expect, from the beginning, United Nations ambivalence and indecision:

Mr. al-Baradei writes in the report's conclusion that "there remain a number of important outstanding issues, particularly with regard to Iran's enrichment programme, that require urgent resolution".

US officials, however, are concerned that Mr. al-Baradei, who this year argued in favour of UN inspectors being given more time to locate Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, will try to play down the significance of the recent discoveries made in Iran.

...Although Mr al-Baradei admits that the Iranians have deployed a variety of delaying tactics to prevent UN inspectors gaining access to secret nuclear facilities, he believes that they should be given more time to comply with their obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.


But the close, unqualified relations of Old Europe and the UN with the world's worst dictators has not yet served as a permanent obstacle for justice. For the first time, freedom-loving people of Iran, Iraq and the larger world face a growing, palpable threat from Tehran's mullahs. Everyone who's neither a terrorist nor a statist thug could use some visible resolve from the Bush administration - and we may be about to get it.

UPDATE: From Dan Darling, a pretty darned good reason for America to turn its attention to Tehran. Key word? Al Qaeda.

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