The adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2817 is a study in selective memory and institutional impotence. While 135 nations may have lent their names to a document condemning Iranian retaliation, the resolution’s primary achievement is highlighting the United Nations’ total irrelevance as an arbiter of global peace. By focusing on the reaction while ignoring the provocation, the Council has effectively become a cheerleader for the original aggressor.

On February 28, the world watched as a blatant, wanton and deliberate military strike was launched against a nation that was actively engaged in the delicate art of diplomacy. This was not a state in isolation but one on the verge of a breakthrough.

According to the credible account of the Omani interlocutor, Mohammed Al-Hassan, a comprehensive deal was not just a hope but a reality within reach. Al-Hassan was clear: “We were inches from a final signature that would have secured regional stability for a generation.” That bridge was not just burnt; it was bombed.

The Gulf’s military landscape

The irony of the Council’s “outrage” over regional instability is particularly sharp when one considers the landscape of the Persian Gulf. It is the very states now seeking UN protection that have allowed US military bases to mushroom around Iran’s borders, transforming the region into a permanent theatre of war.

These are not charity hospitals or humanitarian outposts; they are the brawn and muscle of a hegemonistic power. From the permafrost of Greenland to the canal of Panama, these outposts serve a neocolonial agenda that threatens all nations within its idiosyncratic scope.

Washington’s role in the conflict

Under the current administration, Washington has abandoned even the pretence of even-handedness. Yet President Trump continues to assert his status as a man of peace.

Such claims fly in the face of the 72,000 verified deaths in Gaza and the naked “oil-grabbing” policies directed at Venezuela. Most galling is the steadfast refusal to acknowledge that it was American Tomahawks that struck civilian targets, including schools, in the initial February 28 assault.

Ironically, these are the very children that Tomahawks ordered by him have killed. These are the very children his policies should have given hope to.

A moral challenge for the international community

Any nation associating itself with this one-sided distortion and a travesty of a resolution brings a deep shame to its citizens. The international community’s priority should not be waving a star-spangled banner blotched with the blood of children and the debris of broken treaties.

Instead, the urgent task is to rein in an American president who has run amok, alongside his partner in war crimes in Israel, and work to bring this to a halt.

A question of UN relevance

Until the UN can address the root of the aggression rather than the symptoms of the response, it remains a relic of an era it can no longer protect.

© Free Press Journal