Endgame for Iran

IT'S been a tough few years for the United Nations. Rocked by corruption, sex scandals and a growing number of nations who no longer feel the need to justify themselves to Turtle Bay, the UN increasingly looks like a piece of mid-20th-century equipment out of place in 2006. Which is too bad, because the world could sorely use an effective body to broker a solution to the rapidly building standoff between Iran and much of the rest of the world. With the UN Security Council set to meet this week to discuss what to do about Iran, and the mullahs of Tehran threatening to hold back petroleum supplies as they rapidly hurtle towards membership in the nuclear club, the world is looking at potential catastrophes ranging from an oil crisis to a very quick, very hot shooting match with a nuclear power headed by a regime with apocalypse on the brain. The US is too fully committed in Iraq to offer much help militarily and Iran's nuclear program is too spread out over too many sites for the Israeli air force to launch a pre-emptive strike of the sort they mounted against Iraq's nuclear program in 1982. So what is left? At the moment, just the UN, which will soon get a last chance to avert disaster with Tehran and prove the efficacy of multilateral diplomacy.

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