Crisis on the East River

The eruption of the Iran and Afghan crises—or the Iranian-Afghan crisis, for they are one—over the past month created a glow of history around the United Nations. That it was a false dawn does not go quite without saying. For wherever there is an outbreak of major trouble in the world, there is always a speck, a hair, an atom of a chance that men and peoples that count will contrive to use the UN for some fruitful end.

President Carter was clearly determined in this case to squeeze the UN dry of every such chance. So the United States went to the Security Council with a resolution urging the release of the hostages and an ultimatum to Teheran. It sent Secretary General Waldheim on a reluctant and fruitless mission to the Ayatollah Khomeini. It went back to the Security Council, but this time with Afghanistan, and, after a Soviet veto, to the General Assembly, where no veto is possible, to override the Soviets. It went back to the Security Council yet again, when the Iranian ultimatum deadline expired, with a call for sanctions. After another Soviet veto it asked all those countries which, had supported sanctions to impose them anyway.

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Nicholas King

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The eruption of the Iran and Afghan crises—or the Iranian-Afghan crisis, for they are one—over the past month created a glow of history around the United Nations. That it was a false dawn does not go quite without saying. For wherever there is an outbreak of major trouble in the world, there is always a speck, a hair, an atom of a chance that men and peoples that count will contrive to use the UN for some fruitful end.

President Carter was clearly determined in this case to squeeze the UN dry of every such chance. So the United States went to the Security Council with a resolution urging the release of the hostages and an ultimatum to Teheran. It sent Secretary General Waldheim on a reluctant and fruitless mission to the Ayatollah Khomeini. It went back to the Security Council, but this time with Afghanistan, and, after a Soviet veto, to the General Assembly, where no veto is possible, to override the Soviets. It went back to the Security Council yet again, when the Iranian ultimatum deadline expired, with a call for sanctions. After another Soviet veto it asked all those countries which, had supported sanctions to impose them anyway.