Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly have lost much of their glow, and much of the hope once invested in them. Leaders go to renew their wager on an awakening of international legitimacy, however late. Before that, they go to address their own peoples from this international balcony- and in reality they are betting on a public-relations party held outside the hall of speeches and wishes.
In past decades, the leaders of small states would paste their countries' tears onto the wall of the United Nations. The General Assembly lived for a long time amid the clamor of the confrontation that governed the world of the two camps. The memory of the building that resides in New York holds raucous hours that stole the world's gaze: a scene cut from the cloth of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev protesting with blows of his shoe; the scene of Fidel Castro, with the allure of his biography, his beard, and his olive fatigues, delivering an endless fiery speech denouncing American imperialism and affirming himself a thorn lodged in its side; and the scene of Muammar Gaddafi trying to tear up the UN Charter and throw it to the floor, flooding the Jamahiriya's delegation with astonishment, embarrassment, and shame.
Time is an executioner that cuts the neck of dreams and illusions. Castro's mausoleum suffers repeated power cuts for lack of fuel. His country writhes over the fire of crises, awaiting the ripening of the hour of its fall into the hands of America, neighbor and enemy. Castro is no longer a source of inspiration, at home or abroad. Most likely he felt terrible pain on being told that "General" Donald Trump had led Comrade Nicolás Maduro off to an American prison and struck a deal with his aides.
The world has changed. The Soviet delegate's name has become the Russian delegate. The master of the Kremlin can no longer sit with the master of the White House as an equal to discuss the management of the world's affairs. The heir of the Red Army has been fighting on Ukrainian soil for years and is enlisting the soldiers of Kim Il Sung's grandson to reduce the number of bodies returning to the Russian frost. This long war befits neither great Russia nor its tsar, Vladimir Putin. The statements of his shadow, Medvedev, are regrettable; he speaks as though turning a nuclear bomb over in his hands and brandishing it at aging Europe.
This week the people of the Middle East will not pay much attention to the speeches of the General Assembly. They have a feeling that Guterres's organization has become a mere relief agency, sending flour, tents, and blankets to the victims of fires that have fallen captive to the envoys of the great powers and to regional schemes. The world will certainly turn its attention to the big summit, when Trump receives his "friend" Xi Jinping, director of the "factory of the world" and laboratory of artificial intelligence.
The eyes of the people of the sick Middle East will not turn to New York. If the United Nations had weapons other than wishes, it would have used them. The eyes of the people of the Middle East will certainly turn to Bab al-Mandab. What happened there certainly goes beyond the Yemeni-Yemeni conflict. It is a regional and international matter. It is impossible to believe that the Houthis carried out their attack on a Houthi decision; the history of their experience indicates that their weapons are Iranian and their decision is Iranian. It is difficult to believe the world will agree to Iran's attempt to win the title of policeman of the two straits.
To understand what happened in Bab al-Mandab, one must pause at what CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper said: that American forces had facilitated the passage of more than a billion barrels of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz over the past two months, and had helped more than two thousand commercial ships transit. But more serious than all of this was his statement that Iran had been unable to export a single barrel of oil under the measures of the American naval blockade.
Most likely the harshness of the American blockade pushed Iran to move its cards to provoke a major energy crisis at the global level, and to press on the chances of the American Republican Party in the midterm elections. So seizing control of Bab al-Mandab appears as an Iranian punishment of Trump, who imposed the naval blockade- whose effectiveness is confirmed by the continuing deterioration in the value of the Iranian currency. There are those who believe that Iran- which has come to fear that Iranians will take to the streets in protest at the mounting economic and living deterioration- is inclined to cause a major explosion in the region, in the hope that it pushes the world to demand a final ceasefire there, easing its exit from the present impasse in which it is floundering. These people place the Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia in this context.
Observers are inclined to speak of difficult months ahead if the Iranian decision remains captive to the semi-suicidal policies pursued by the generals of the Revolutionary Guard with the blessing of the Supreme Leader. The question is: who will lead the region out of its present condition? If we exclude the possibility of America returning to direct military pressure, many believe that China is the only party qualified to play a role here, if the Trump-Xi summit lays down a serious road map for coexistence, competition, and cooperation between the two giants. The fate of the two straits concerns China, which depends on the region for its energy supplies, and its strong relations with Iran enable it to exert pressure to rationalize the Iranian decision. But does China want to leave its cautious style behind and engage in finding a solution for a region whose stability bears on its own economy and on the whole world's?
Bab al-Mandab concerns the region and the world far more than the scenes of the General Assembly. From Ukraine to Sudan and on to Bab al-Mandab, the keys appear to reside in the drawers of the president of the United States, not in the drawers of the secretary-general of the United Nations.
