Global Policy Forum

The call by Iran to destroy Israel is, sadly, not new. In 2001, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a former president, suggested that the Islamic world annihilate the Jewish state with nuclear weapons, an attack that he claimed would "just produce damages" to the perpetrator. And the elimination of Israel has been a constant theme of rallies organised by the regime. Nevertheless, the speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Teheran on Wednesday was shocking. He told a conference entitled "The World without Zionism" that Israel should be "wiped off the map", and expressed no doubt that the latest wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks would soon remove "this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world."

Such remarks by a head of state about a fellow member of the United Nations are unprecedented. The nearest equivalent is China's refusal to renounce force in seeking reunification with Taiwan, a de facto sovereign entity; in July, one of its generals said his country was prepared to go to nuclear war with America over the island. Mr Ahmadinejad's speech has been condemned by, among others, the European Union, at its Hampton Court summit yesterday, America, Australia, Canada and Russia. Shamefully, there has not been a squeak from the Arab world. Do Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania, all of which have recognised Israel, have no riposte to a president who rants that they will "burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury" for having established diplomatic relations with Israel?

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, condemned Islamic Jihad's suicide bombing in the Israeli coastal town of Hadera on Wednesday, but has had nothing to say about an existential threat by Iran, one of the movement's sponsors, to a state with which he is trying to reach a final status solution. And there has likewise been silence from governments such as those of Morocco, Qatar and Tunisia, which have sought to strengthen links with Israel following its recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Shimon Peres, Israel's deputy prime minister and an archetypal dove, has suggested that Iran be expelled from the UN. The proposal is pertinent. A member that calls for the destruction of another defies the purposes of the organisation's charter, and should be sanctioned by the Security Council.

That body has seemed to court irrelevance over the past few years. It declined to grasp the nettle of Saddam Hussein's repeated challenges to its authority. It has handed over North Korea's nuclear ambitions to six-party talks hosted by China. It has yet to take proper responsibility for a similar challenge posed by Iran, the issue remaining with the International Atomic Energy Agency, despite Teheran's cavalier attitude to repeated resolutions by the board of governors. Mr Ahmadinejad's speeches to the UN General Assembly last month and to the Teheran conference on Wednesday have richly confirmed his reputation as a hardline ex-Revolutionary Guard. If the Security Council fails to confront such a rogue head of state, it does not deserve its name.

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