Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has canceled his trip to New York to address the U.N. Security Council before a vote on whether to impose further sanctions against his country for refusing to stop enriching uranium, a Foreign Ministry official said Friday.
Mohammad Mir Ali Mohammadi, press secretary of Iran's mission at the U.N., told The Associated Press that the U.S. did not deliver a visa to the U.S. Embassy in Bern, Switzerland, in time for the Iranian president to pick it up and fly to New York for the council session Saturday.
He said Russia and China were trying to postpone the session until Monday and if the session was put off Ahamdinejad would decide whether to come.
Does Ahmadinejad really believe he can make a difference? Does he think he will project that halo, induce unblinking attention, and mesmerize the delegates into voting down sanctions?
We have denied that we got requested visas to the Iranians too late for tomorrow.
Really, the only thing Ahmadinejad could say to cancel a vote would be to announce a nuclear test in the southeast part of Iran and give the Europeans an excuse to abandon sanctions as part of their long-range plan to avoid action (tough luck, they'll say, we were just about to back action but now it is too late, no?) and resume business dealings with Tehran.
The Europeans want to be fooled, really. Why disappoint them?
