Two clips from today’s nonproliferation summit, one of Dinnerjacket (rocking the shades!) and the other of Hillary’s response. Here’s how the UN works. Right off the bat, everyone watching recognizes that this is pure posturing — right down to the big noisy show of a White House that campaigned on engagement telling its delegates to walk out in protest. A new round of sanctions may well pass but all parties concerned understand that it won’t stop Iran’s bomb quest, which is why, as John Bolton writes today, the only meaningful calculus left is when and whether Israel will act. To the extent that security-council votes on sanctions are still in play, they’ll be purchased with favors behind closed doors, not with speeches like these. Which is to say, the UN operates like any other legislature — except, of course, that this lying fanatic is given the same platform, and treated as a member of equal esteem, as the civilized nations present. For example:

The 189 treaty members – every nation but India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, all of which have nuclear arsenals or weapons programs – gather every five years to discuss new approaches to problems, by agreeing, for example, that the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear inspection agency, should be strengthened.

But the NPT conference cannot easily “name and shame” an alleged treaty violator, such as Iran, since as a member state its delegation would block consensus.

As for A-jad’s speech, the usual:

In his 35-minute speech, Ahmadinejad called for the suspension of the United States from the IAEA Board of Governors on grounds that it dropped atomic bombs on Japan in World War II and used depleted-uranium shells in the Iraq war. In addition, he demanded “reform” of the 15-member U.N. Security Council, saying its structure was “extremely unfair and inefficient and mainly serves the interests of the nuclear weapons states.”

It’s almost a shame that he didn’t refer to his country’s new seat on the women’s rights council. A cri de coeur to defend vulnerable women would have been the icing on this absurd cake.

In related news, the White House revealed the size of America’s operable nuclear arsenal today after keeping it secret for decades. Apparently that’s going to guilt China into coming clean too, or something.