Obviously not getting into the spirit of United Nations Day, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad derided as “piles of paper” UN Security Council resolutions demanding Iranian halt its nuclear program.
“The so-called dossier at the Security Council is a pile of papers that have no value. They can add to those worthless papers everyday because it has no effect on the will of the Iranian nation,” state television quoted Ahmadinejad as saying Wednesday.
Ahmidenijad has always positioned himself as the fly in the American ointment. But here, he’s not just insulting the United States, but Europe, Russia, and China as well. China, in particular, has increasingly sought to use the Security Council as a locus of its foreign policy priorities so it would seem to me that they have an interest in defending the authority of the Security Council against attacks like this. To the extent that Ahmidenijad has sought to stoke divisions within the Security Council, I have to wonder if his bluster today is ultimately counterproductive.