Posted By Colum Lynch 
For European and American leaders, U.N. General Assembly debates would not be the complete without delivering a full-throated attack on Iran's nuclear program.
But this year, the council's major powers have been mute, particularly the three European powers, Britain, France and Germany, that have engaged in a long, fruitless effort to persuade the Iranian leadership to provide verifiable assurances that its nuclear program is peaceful in exchange for a basket of trade benefits and political rewards.
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy didn't make a single reference to Iran's nuclear program in his address last week to the General Assembly. British Prime Minister David Cameron blasted Iran's repressive policies at home, but said nothing about its atomic ambitions. Ditto for Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
Minutes after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad blasted the United States, Britain, and Israel for military aggression in the Middle East and elsewhere, Cameron shot back: "He didn't remind us that he runs a country where they may have election of a sort but they also repress freedom of speech, do everything they can to avoid the accountability of a free media, violently repress demonstrations and detain and torture those who argue for a better future."
President Barack Obama did commit a couple of sentences to Tehran's nuclear program, but it was largely boilerplate, and lacked the sense of urgency and alarm that has marked previous public statements.
"The Iranian government cannot demonstrate that its program is peaceful, it has not met its obligations and it rejects offers that would provide it with peaceful nuclear power," Obama said in a U.N. speech that addressed the Arab Spring and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Iran, along with North Korea, "must be met with greater pressure and isolation," he said, if they "continue down a path that is outside international law."
If one missed the fire and brimstone diplomatic sermons on Iran's nuclear threat that used to be standard fare in Washington and Paris there was only Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking a day after Ahmadinejad excoriated the West for a litany of historical sins, Netanyahu said "can you imagine that man who ranted yesterday -- can you imagine him armed with nuclear weapons? The international community must stop Iran before it's too late. If Iran is not stopped, we will all face the specter of nuclear terrorism, and the Arab Spring could soon become an Iranian Winter."
But apart from Netanyahu, it was notably quiet. "Most Council members remain concerned about the continuation and possible acceleration of Iran's nuclear program," according to an assessment by the Security Council Report, a non-profit, Columbia University-affiliated research group that tracks the Security Council's activities. "However, as has been the case for some months, even members willing to consider additional action against Iran do not view any new measures as likely in the near future. It appears most members are not eager to push for additional Council action at this time."
Certainly, Iran's nuclear program hasn't gone away or halted its advances. On Sept. 2, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a mixed report on Iran's nuclear activities, citing continued cooperation with nuclear inspectors who visited many of Iran's declared nuclear facilities, but also confirmed efforts by Tehran to step up its uranium enrichment activities -- including the introduction of more advanced enrichment technology -- in flagrant violation of successive U.N. resolutions.
The report also cited "extensive and comprehensive" information related to a possible clandestine military program to develop a nuclear payload for a missile. The report's findings, coupled with Iranian officials' public pronouncements, has raised concerns among the U.S. and Europeans about Iran's plan to expand their stockpile of a more refined grade of uranium enriched to 19.75 percent -- higher than that needed for the generation of electricity and more than required to fuel its advanced medical reactor in Tehran.
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