The United Nations, that grand theatre of diplomatic gestures, has once again strutted forth with a demand. This time, its experts insist Iran release the British-linked Foreman family, held amid a shadowy standoff. One must ask: does anyone in Geneva genuinely believe this ultimatum will bend Tehran's will?
The answer, I suspect, is a resounding no. We are witnessing not a crisis of leverage but a crisis of nerve. Iran, a nation that has mastered the art of defiance since 1979, treats UN resolutions as the West treats its own historical memory: selectively.
The Foremans, trapped in a legal labyrinth, become symbols of a deeper decay. The Western intellectual class, enamoured with moral posturing, confuses demands for justice with actual agency. This is the Fall of Rome in slow motion, where emperors issue edicts while barbarians laugh at the gates.
The Victorian era, for all its imperial overreach, understood the calculus of power. A British consul would have dispatched a gunboat. Today, we send strongly worded statements.
The UN experts, with their fine phrases and hollow sanctions, remind us that institutional rot is not a prophecy but a process. Iran, meanwhile, will continue its game of brinkmanship, knowing full well that the West lacks both the will and the coherence to enforce its own decrees. The Foreman family, like so many before them, are pawns in a geopolitical drama where the audience has grown weary and the actors have forgotten their lines.
