I got a tip last night from a source on the Israeli side that this story at Foreign Policy accurately describes how the White House is trying to manage the flotilla investigation. The plan was to pressure Israel into starting its own probe ASAP, complete with international members, before momentum built at the Security Council for an international UN-led probe that would inevitably railroad the IDF. In fact, according to Foreign Policy, that may have been the point of the leak heard ’round the blogosphere to Bill Kristol last week — to scare the Israelis into thinking the U.S. would join in supporting an international probe if they didn’t get it in gear.

Just one problem with the plan. Apparently, so intent is the UN on its very own show trial that they’re searching for ways to do it whether the U.S. likes it or not.

A spokesman for United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that the secretary general remains “hopeful” that the world body will approve an international inquiry into the Gaza flotilla incident — on top of Israel’s own domestic investigation — after it received overwhelming support in a closed Security Council meeting Tuesday…

A diplomat with one Security Council member country said that 14 of 15 nations had expressed support for some form of panel established by the secretary general — rather than by a Security Council vote, which the United States could block — to investigate the deaths on a Turkish ship bound for Gaza. The U.S. was the sole nation not to support the measure in the closed session, the source said…

The U.S. position on the panel — amid intense support for it among U.N. members — has been to wait and see what Ban proposes.

“As we always do, we will work hard to make sure that Israel is not treated unfairly at the U.N.,” a U.S. official said.

If the U.S. acquiesces in an international probe after leaning on the Israelis to start one of their own so quickly, I don’t know where that’ll leave relations between the two countries. And if we’ve come to a point where the UN levers of power have been wholly captured by Islamist demagogues like Erdogan, without even a semi-functional American check on international scapegoating of Tel Aviv, then Israel’s well and truly finished diplomatically. Exit question via Jennifer Rubin: Is this a Barack Obama/James Jones failure of will?