The U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty and Sanctions On Iran

Ted Bromund / August 28, 2009

Earlier this week, the Heritage Foundation published a lengthy study of the U.N.’s proposed Arms Trade Treaty. The study details numerous problems inherent in this proposal, which is now being considered by a New York-based working group. The campaign behind the treaty is based on faulty premises, and the treaty, if brought into being as currently projected, will facilitate, not curb, the illegal arms trade, while at the same time posing a danger to the Second Amendment, to the ability of the U.S. to resist tyranny around the world, and to U.S. export controls.

In a fine article posted on Real Clear World, Michael Jacobson, a senior fellow in The Washington Institute’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence and a former senior advisor in the Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, explains part of what is at stake. Contrary to the argument commonly made by the left, the foreign policy of the U.S. is not driven by its export policy. In fact, the U.S. is one of the very few countries that is willing to make a genuine and serious effort to stop trade with dictatorships, such as Iran, to achieve political and moral ends. Or, as Jacobson puts it: (more…)