As Enrichment Deal Is Struck, Iran Exercises Diplomatic Clout In Numerous UN Agencies

Iran is continuing to flex its muscles in all sorts of UN bodies, most recently in the selection of the next executive director of the U.N.'s World Property Organization (WIPO). And...

"...Iran sits until 2015 on the 36-member executive board of the influential United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which is the chief coordinator for U.N. programs in all 162 countries where it has offices, as well as the U.N.'s chief anti-poverty agency...

"The Islamic Republic also has appointed a member to the 34-member board of the World Health Organization (WHO), and is a member of the 49-nation governing Council of the 192-member Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), as well as the 36-member Executive Board of UNICEF.

"Iran also sits on the guiding industrial development board and program and budget committees of UNIDO, the United Nations Development Organization, an agency increasingly shunned by developed nations but a bastion of the developing world. In addition, it is a member of the 32-nation executive council of the 156-nation World Tourism Organization, which, among other things, promotes a "global ethics code for tourism," an activity that the WTO says makes up 9 percent of global GNP...

"'There's a real gap in the U.N. governance system,' agrees Mark Wallace, himself a former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. for management and reform, and currently head of United Against Nuclear Iran, an organization devoted to brining financial, corporate and grassroots pressure to bear to rein in Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. 'Iran has flouted U.N. Security Council resolutions for years and years. It is not good governance for a country running afoul of U.N. sanctions to be building legitimacy for itself through the same U.N. system.'"