The United Nations Has Reached a New Height of Irrelevance

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The Iran War is the final nail in the coffin of the post-World War II global order.

The Iran War, which began on February 28, 2026, will be debated for years over strategy, escalation, and regional effects. But one of its most enduring consequences may lie elsewhere. The war has exposed with unusual clarity the United Nations’ total irrelevance to questions of war and peace.

This is not a new problem. For decades, observers have pointed to the UN’s paralysis in resolving major conflicts. But what distinguishes the Iran episode is not just the UN’s singular failure but rather the normalization of its impotence. The UN was not consulted in any meaningful way before the strikes. It did not authorize them. It did not and could not constrain them. After the war commenced, the UN played no role in shaping events leading up to the tenuous ceasefire announced this week. The international organization was reduced to a stage on which explanations were offered, not a forum in which decisions were made or accountability enforced.

That distinction matters. The UN was created to prevent exactly this kind of unilateral use of force. The central idea of the post-World War II order was simple but ambitious: that states, particularly powerful ones, would not go to war on their own authority. Instead, decisions about the use of force would be mediated through a collective body, the Security Council, acting on behalf of the international community. What we are witnessing today is the quiet abandonment of that idea.

To understand how we got here, it is worth recalling that the UN system was always built on a contradiction. In theory, all states are equal and bound by the same rules. In practice, the system privileges the great powers, which hold veto authority in the Security Council. That arrangement was meant to ensure their participation in the world body and prevent a repetition of the League of Nations’ failure between the world wars. But it also ensured that when their interests are directly involved, the system cannot function as it was designed to do.

For much of the Cold War, this paralysis was accepted as the price of stability. After the Cold War, there was a brief moment when the Security Council appeared to work as intended. The 1991 Gulf War, authorized by the........

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