It’s not a joke. On April 9, the United Nations Disarmament Commission reelected Iran to the senior office of a vice chairman. The commission also elected Syria as its recording secretary.

The very day the Disarmament Commission—yes, as the name implies, this organization is in fact responsible for reducing the development of dangerous weapons by dangerous nations—cast its vote to reelect Iran to one of the three vice chair positions, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran could now produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale. No joke. He did so from the Natanz nuclear facility, the very site producing the very enriched uranium that caused the UN to slap sanctions on Tehran in December and just last month.

Iranian representative and vice chairman Seyed Mohammad Ali Robatjazi wasted no time in blasting the United States and “the Zionist lobby” for not complying with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, centerpiece of the Disarmament Commission’s legislative table.

Similarly, Syria was given its post in the Disarmament Commission even as it continues to support Hezbollah terrorists, who routinely launch rockets into Israeli cities during peacetime. Damascus is, quite seriously, one of the State Department’s top five terrorist nations, and has been on the list since 1979—longer than any of its four ignominious counterparts.

Just as the UN has made a farce of its attempts to promote disarmament, so also is the case with its human rights efforts. The April 11 National Review reported that on March 26, Mexican Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba, president of the UN Human Rights Council, announced that the body had adopted the following statement in reference to Iran:

One, … the Human Rights Council has in closed meetings examined the human rights situation in … the Islamic Republic of Iran. … Two, the Human Rights Council has decided to discontinue the consideration of the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran. … Three, … members of the Human Rights Council should make no reference in the public debate to the confidential decisions and material concerning [Iran] ….

Ambassador Alfonso de Alba’s favorable comments concerning Iran’s sketchy human rights “situation” are no laughing matter, particularly as they coincided with an anything-but-funny event taking place on Iranian soil: the captivity and mistreatment of British sailors.

Rather than marking a momentous change inside Iran or Syria, the promotion of accessories to proliferation, terrorism and human rights violations—by the very bodies designed to eradicate proliferation, terrorism and human rights violations—marks yet another forfeiture of the UN’s credibility as a vehicle for world stability.

It’s not a joke. And yet sadly, in many ways it is.