Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2026, pp. 22-24
IS THE UNITED NATIONS DEAD or merely crippled? President Franklin Roosevelt famously referred to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 as “a day that will live in infamy.” This was not just because of the lethal force of the assault, but also because Tokyo attacked without warning or declaration of war. So, “infamy” is an apt description of the United States-Israel assault on Iran, a country with which Washington was engaged in intense and, by Omani accounts, fruitful negotiations.
However, perhaps the events of 3-11 should be considered more consequential than mere infamy. On March 11, 2026, 13 members of the United Nations Security Council, with only two abstentions, voted for Resolution 2817, condemning Iran’s response to the U.S.-Israel attack. Even more regrettably, no fewer than 134 member countries sponsored the Bahraini resolution. At least the resolution did not include Israel among the states listed as victims of Iranian “aggression,” but the silence is deafening. The resolution did not mention the joint U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran or the United States’ killing of 180 schoolgirls in an air raid.
Russia and China’s response, provocatively calling on both sides for a ceasefire, was puckish, mirroring previous Western resolutions on Ukraine. However, their attempt to call a ceasefire was effectively thwarted, as few members would defy the U.S. Now, under U.S. direction, the U.N. has condemned a target country for its response to what amounts to a Pearl Harbor attack while in contrast, even the much-derided League of Nations never condemned Abyssinia or China for resisting Italian or Japanese invasions. Perversely, Trump’s attack has allowed Russia and China to pose as champions of international legality. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s masterful analysis of the Gulf States’ request for Moscow’s support for their resolution that unequivocally and uniquely condemned Iran was both legal and diplomatically masterful, including his side-swipe description of them as “monarchies.” Although Moscow’s former long-time U.N. representative never dissected the invasion of Ukraine with such forensic accuracy, his arguments were irrefutable.
“What-aboutery” is a dangerous path usually serving to justify one atrocity with another. However bloody and authoritarian, the regime in Tehran never invaded another country or occupied any territory beyond its recognized borders. Its only external war was with Iraq, in which the U.N. later determined that Iran was the victim, while tactfully omitting that the West, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States armed, financed and provided diplomatic cover for Saddam Hussain’s attack. It is perhaps no coincidence that the same group of monarchical regimes has been inciting war against Tehran.
The Iranian regime has provided support to armed groups in foreign countries but an impartial referee might question the extent of Saudi Arabia’s support for al-Qaeda or the CIA’s involvement in backing militias and terrorists in numerous nations. Naturally, it would be anti-Semitic to acknowledge that the only nuclear power in the region has partially occupied many of its neighbors and conducted airstrikes against a dozen of them recently, on top of its history of boasting about its global deployment of assassination squads. Indeed, those who have not yet been affected by Alzheimer’s disease may recall numerous United Nations resolutions against that state’s nuclear power or the many more that would have been passed had the United States not vetoed them.
Given the ineffectiveness of the United Nations against the veto holders and their allies, it is not surprising that its reputation has been tarnished, with its members tacitly condoning Israel’s destruction of U.N. premises in Jerusalem and Gaza and failing to protect their nominees on the International Court of Justice from U.S. sanctions.
Recently, President Donald Trump has reiterated his disdain for Roosevelt’s postwar order that he is so effectively demolishing. Most insultingly, he established his absurd Board of Peace as a backstop to the already complaisant Security Council. The Council’s members had indeed validated his contempt for them when they agreed to the Gaza settlement, thereby implicitly authorizing the Board of Peace.
Nothing in the disastrous Gaza peace agreement legitimizes the board’s ambitious expansion to a global jurisdiction. Most delegations refrained from mentioning the board’s inadequacies and diplomats compounded their embarrassment a month later by smiling and nodding through Trump’s humiliation of the Council when he sent his robotic spouse, Melania, to chair a Security Council meeting on “children in combat” while overlooking the slaughter of Iranian schoolgirls just two days before.
Also unaddressed was Washington’s withholding the cash it owed for many U.N. agencies like UNICEF, and UNRWA, all of which play a significant role in assisting children. Ms. Trump had not previously demonstrated any interest in global affairs or the United Nations, so it is suspected that, as well as humiliating the organization, her appearance was also intended as a public relations boost for her critically panned hagiography.
The president’s idiosyncratic psychological pathology means that, as with the Nobel Peace Prize or the Kennedy Center, he craves recognition from institutions that he does not understand or appreciate but knows others do. He is a reverse Midas. Everything the legendary Lydian king touched turned to gold, but everything the U.S. president handles becomes excrement.
It is improbable that he would actually withdraw from the United Nations. To paraphrase Lyndon B. Johnson, it is better to remain within the tent to urinate on others in close proximity, rather than from outside. We should also remember that, within those parameters, his war of attrition against the United Nations and international order is only slightly different from the campaigns that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its congressional allies have waged against the U.N. for decades. In the past, when confronted with executive insouciance regarding the actual law, the State Department attempted to balance the immediate benefits of cynical realpolitik with the overall need to simulate legality. They required a United Nations strong enough to invoke when they expediently enforced the “law” on the rest of the world, providing sufficient fig leaves for a coalition of the coerced.
Baghdad’s failure to comply with Security Council resolutions had been a flimsy excuse for the wars on Iraq, made slightly more credible because, during the Council’s deliberations on resolutions, they subcontracted the execution of such decisions to assorted coalitions of the willing and omitted sunset clauses on them. The much-fudged wording reduces diplomatic ambiguity to effective vacuity, allowing “the strong to do what they can, the weak to suffer what they must,” as the Athenian generals told their defeated foes. While Trump and his associates have not delved into the intricacies of ancient Greek history, they have exhibited a remarkably similar bluntness in their outlook, disregarding international law. Threats reminiscent of those made by the Athenians during private negotiations are now openly proclaimed from the studios of Fox News.
To cap the humiliating obeisance the White House demands of others, the recent withdrawal of Palestinian Representative Riyad Mansour from the race for the Presidency of the United Nations General Assembly is a poignant emblem of surrender. The position would have provided a symbolic vindication of Palestinian rights, which undoubtedly explains the recent immense pressure exerted by Mahmoud Abbas’ inner circle in Ramallah to stop Mansour’s candidacy. The same unelected group had previously endorsed the alleged Gaza peace plan and the Board of Peace.
Even sympathetic delegations could scarcely appear more pro-Palestinian than Ramallah and thus did not oppose the diplomatic capitulation. As is often the case, the betrayal of Palestinian rights undermines the international rules-based order that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been lamenting. It is perhaps emblematic that Western governments, such as his, have played a prominent role in supporting Israel, thereby weakening that global order.
With such pervasive subservience to Washington, the prospects for the emergence of an adequate Secretary General appear bleak. Will the occupant of the White House nominate his spouse or his horse? What alternative would he accept? One possibility is Rafael Grossi, the Argentinian head of the Atomic Energy Agency, who remains in that office despite etiquette suggesting that U.N. agency heads campaigning for Secretary General should vacate office while campaigning to avoid suspicion of exploiting U.N. resources to fight for election. However part of his campaign is probably providing excuses for attacks on Iran to his frequent interlocutor U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Would the other nations that implicitly condone war on Iran, genocide in Palestine, and lawfare against their own international judges stand against White House whims?
U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is president of the Foreign Press Association of the U.S. He is the author of U.N.told: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).