UAE Seizes North Korean Arms Ship Bound For Iran, Pro-Engagement Foreign Policy Experts Perplexed

About time. The UAE has been the gaping hole in the Iran sanctions net for years:

The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship carrying North Korean weapons to Iran, marking the first time a nation has acted on UN sanctions to stop the communist state’s proliferation, a diplomat said Friday… A diplomat, speaking to AFP in New York on condition of anonymity, said UAE government officials had informed the UN Security Council’s sanctions committee, which is responsible for implementing sanctions on Pyongyang. “It is an issue that is being processed by the committee,” said the source, who declined further comment on details on the weapons.

I was going to end with the MR post from last April about how Obama prevented our cutting-edge missile defense from getting deployed lest it “provoke” the North Koreans. But instead here’s a post from last Tuesday about how Obama’s diplomatic push toward Pyongyang is paying off.

Do you think the informal club of celebrity tyrants who so fascinate our liberal foreign policy community actually laugh out loud when they talk about Obama?

With regime change off the table, and President Obama dishing out “mutual respect” faster than the rulers of Tehran, Tripoli, Pyongyang or Caracas can spit their contempt right back in his face, tyrants are becoming ever more weirdly trendy. They are globalized, in our face, on the Web, on television–and as New York braces for the September opening of the United Nations General Assembly, some of them, with considerable ceremony, are coming to town.

The most flamboyant among them enter a VIP orbit, in which they may be officially reviled, but also eagerly sought after. Recall the banquet hosted by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last September at the midtown Manhattan Grand Hyatt for 1,000 or so of his closest friends. Or remember the gushing accounts two years ago of the invitations sent out, as Time magazine described it, on “creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy,” to a select 50 or so American opinion-makers to sup with Ahmadinejad at the Intercontinental Hotel in New York. Whatever the protesters shouted outside the security cordon, it has become an accepted part of New York’s fall season that Ahmadinejad and his retinue arrive for a hoopla of motorcades, talk shows, press conferences and banquets.

It’s easy to forget that Ahmadinejad was endlessly fascinating to the left, right up until his “no gays in Iran” stunt made it declasse to defend him. Before that happened foreign policy experts were actually flirting with painting him – apocalyptic lunatic though he is – as a relative moderate:

Hardliners bent on confrontation with the West are presenting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran with a serious challenge to his authority. Government insiders say the clash in the Strait of Hormuz between American warships and Iranian gunboats last week exposed a power struggle at the heart of the regime in Teheran. According to sources within Iran’s ministry of foreign affairs, Mr Ahmadinejad was kept in the dark about the decision to challenge the US ships until after the confrontation had ended. He is understood to have been unhappy about the action, which was ordered by hardline elements in the country’s Revolutionary Guard. “The president is not the commander-in-chief in Iran and it seems he was totally unaware of the incident being planned in advance,” one senior official admitted.

Because why not? The experts feeding this reassuring pap to the Telegraph – “government insiders,” please – got some temporary ethos for risque prognostication. Now that they’ve been proven wrong – now that it’s obvious that Ahmadinejad is of a kind with IRG hardliners – they get to just move on. Which is what always happens.

So yeah, we’ll keep engaging North Korea. There’s an endless supply of condescending academics willing to feed journos quotes about how it’s “in our interest,” and there’s an endless supply of state department bureaucrats who need to believe them. They have PhDs and get invited to Doha. Have you been to Doha? Then shut up.

References:
* Dubai is the ‘hole in the net’ of sanctions on Iran [Telegraph]
* Obama Banned Cutting-Edge Radar From Monitoring NK Launch Because It Would “Provoke” Them
* US inches toward dialogue with NKorea [AFP]
* The Age Of The Celebrity Tyrant [Forbes]
* Will Liberals Please Stop Finding Ahmadinejad So Damn Fascinating? [MR]
* US navy clash exposed rise of Iran’s hardliners [Telegraph]
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Undisturbed By Decades Of Disastrously Wrong Domestic And International Predictions [MR]