It is well known that the reach of the United Nations is limited, see the US invasion of Iraq without Security Council approval. Like domestic politics, geopolitics involves agreements and concessions that seem contradictory and frustrating.
In any case, it is the body whose mission is to ensure global security and promote human rights. In this sense, the United Nations' relationship with Iran provokes at least astonishment and, at the extreme, outrage among those who have been the target of the theocratic regime's atrocities and those who fight against them.
After moral police killed Mahsa Amini in September 2022 for improperly wearing the veil, the wave of protests sweeping the country was suppressed, with thousands arrested and hundreds killed. To investigate violations, the United Nations set up an independent factfinding mission, which Iran rejected.
The mission found several human rights violations. The UN special rapporteur on Iran, Javaid Rehman, said the government's actions could be classified as crimes against humanity.
A year later, who was appointed chair of the body's Human Rights Council Social Forum? Iran. Yes, that sounds like a joke.
And it doesn't stop there. The country is also known to support terrorist groups such as Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, as well as rebels such as the Houthis in Yemen, with arms supplies. The director of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran's escalation of uranium enrichment, which has exceeded limits set by a 2015 deal by 15 times, is reckless. There is a risk that Tehran would be able to produce a nuclear bomb.
What is the UN doing? Allows Iran to chair the Conference on Disarmament between March and May this year.
It would be funny if it weren't tragic. By putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop, the UN is demeaning the suffering of Iranian women and their own mission, and symbolically supporting a murderous theocracy.