Maybe the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict focused the minds in the UN Security Council because, to my surprise, the UN has set a date certain for Iran to stop uranium processing or face sanctions will commence.

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council reached a deal yesterday on a resolution that would give Iran until the end of next month to suspend uranium enrichment or face the threat of sanctions.

The latest draft is weaker than an initial proposal from Britain, France and Germany, with US backing. Although the earlier version would have made the threat of sanctions immediate if Iran did not comply, the new draft would essentially give Iran another chance to come around. That was a victory for Russia and China, arguing that the resolution was not an ultimatum but a new request for Iran to accept a deal that would give it various incentives if it suspended uranium enrichment and reprocessing.

“There are no sanctions introduced on Iran in the draft resolution that we are finalising,” Vitali Churkin, the Russian Ambassador to the UN, said. He emphasised that work on the resolution was not finished.

I still hold out little hope this will work out to stop Iran’s martyrdom complex, but it is an interesting turn of events. Because the real test is on the Security Council. If the result is nothing of consequence, many in the US will have plenty of reason to severely cut our support to the UN and move to a mode where hey partition our support for specific activities and we pay for those things we support. The day of the blank check must come to an end. And this could be the perfect wild card issue for the Reps to show how the UN can be supported in missions it can handle (which eliminates a lot of their current missions) and ignored when it is simply a waste of time. Moreover, the UN needs to be returning money illegally siphoned off the Oil For Food program first. Then maybe the US will reconsider a steady flow of our hard earned dollars.

Basically, a failure to impose sanctions on a dangerously unstable Iran will be the final straw for a failed organization that has lost its way over years of waste and abuse.