If The U.N. Means Business With Iran, Then It Has A Funny Way Of Showing It

One faint hope of preventing a serious war between Iran and the United States is for the U.N. to get tough with Iran and impose some meaningful sanctions that will cause the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad enough real financial pain to back down on their nuclear intentions.

But instead Iran has actually been given special rights by the U.N. organization CITIES(Convention On International Trade In Endangered Species Of Wild Fauna, or Flora) to export for sale 100,000 pounds of caviar a year, while every other major world producer of caviar including Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are banned from exporting any caviar. The Black Sea caviar from Russia used to be world famous for quality.

And recess appointed American U.N. Ambassador, John Bolton, who Democrats seriously worried about, and the political right circled their wagons of support around claiming that he would really "shake up the U.N.", in the face of U.N. scandals such as the oil for food scandal with Iraq, surprising offered a nearly toothless comment a few days ago that maybe the U.N. could offer some sanctions that limited the Iranian exports of Persian rugs or pistachio nuts a little bit. One other more serious comment from Bolton did offer that maybe the illegal counterfeiting from Iran should be cracked down on.

Right now one of Iran's biggest exports besides oil, is the counterfeiting of U.S. currency that they dump on the world market. No nation should have to put up with counterfeiting of their currency. This can have serious impact on the value of any currency. Next to China, which allows a widespread counterfeiting of software such as unlicensed Microsoft Operating Systems in many of the Chinese made computers, and as much as 90% of other software and music CDs are counterfeited, Iran and North Korea rate as the world's worst regimes for counterfeiting American goods.

Somehow the U.N. seems to be so far toothless in their approach to offering some sort of meaningful sanctions that could prevent a serious war with Iran. Iran needs to know that a world community is united in fear of their nuclear program as some irresponsible statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and stands together in resolve not to allow the Iranians to create a force of nuclear weapons.

Instead Iranian counterfeiting goes on, day after day. Iranian produced Persian rugs and pistachios are exported. And the U.N. CITIES organization gives Iran special rights to export caviar that no other nation of the world is allowed. If the U.N. means to prevent war, and to mean business with Iran, it has a funny way of showing it.