United Nations, United States, Britain - to the rescue!

Syria's civil war grinds on. The Baathist regime of President Bashar al-Assad has been 're-elected' to another seven-year term by those portions of the country still under regime control, in a election where voting was restricted to Shiite Syrians only. The Sunni citizens of Syria remain violently beleaguered by their government whose military continues to drop barrel bombs into what they insist are rebel-held areas of Damascus and elsewhere in the region.

Smoke ascends after a Syrian military helicopter allegedly dropped one of two barrel bombs over the city of Daraya, southwest of the capital Damascus on ..

More than adequate explanation for the existence of Syrian refugees now numbering about 2.4-million, languishing in refugee camps internally and externally primarily in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees pleads with Western democracies to absorb greater numbers of Syrian refugees, and at the United Nations Hillel Neuer of UNWatch is asking some critical questions.

As, for example, while the Commission of Inquiry on Syria speaks of the country as a living hell because of mass murder, torture, rape, the regime's gassing of civilians with chemical weapons, UNESCO still elected the Syrian regime in 2011 - in an unanimous vote no less -- to its human rights committee. Only a few months ago the UN permitted the Assad regime a seat as a world judge on petititions submitted by human rights victims.

In February of 2014 Syria's news website, Juhayna, gleefully congratulated the regime for the fact that it was "unanimously re-elected as Rapporteur of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization". That very committee, Syria as its Rapporteur, debates the future of Gibraltar, the Falklands, Bermuda, French Polynesia and New Caledonia this week, in New York.

In Yarmouk, Palestinians starve to death because of a regime blockade that will not permit food and medical supplies to enter, but a Syrian representative is seated on a UN podium instructing liberal democracies such as Britain, France, the United States and New Zealand how they must treat populations under their purview to end "subjugation, domination and exploitation" of people.

And then, the United Nations Human Rights Council consolidated its wretched lunatic absurdity by adopting a resolution entitled "Human rights in the occupied Syrian Golan", which was drafted by Syria and which was described by a U.S. delegate as the height of insanity: "To consider such a resolution -- while the Syrian regime continues to slaughter its own citizens by the tens of thousands, exemplifies absurdity."

Yet the UN Commission of Inquiry reporting to the UN Human Rights Council stated that "a regional war in the Middle East draws ever closer", in light of Sunni insurgents fighting in Syria, advancing across Iraq to control areas bridging the Iraq-Syria frontier. Concern over the human rights blights being perpetrated by the Syrian regime, supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia has moved Britain and the United States to propose to make a pact with the devil.

Both countries are entertaining direct talks with Iran over the manner in which the situation in Iraq might be stabilized, even while the embattled country whose currently ruling Shia majority under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's treatment of his Sunni minority in a carbon copy of sectarian treatment taking place in Syria, is leading both countries to being divided by religious sectarianism. Iran's concern over the invasion of Sunni extremist fanatics will in any event lead it to intervene.

It is in its own best interests to aid the Shia-led Iraqi government and it has sent into Iraq hundreds of Iranian troops for that very purpose. Britain, in announcing the re-opening of its embassy in Tehran, and the United States preparing to engage with Tehran over events playing out in Iraq, play handsomely into the conniving hands of a totalitarian Islamist regime whose nuclear weapons development should be of primary concern to all countries valuing peace and security whetever they are.

The USS George HW Bush has been ordered into the Persian Gulf, from which it could send manned aircraft to strike jihadist positions. Photograph: US navy/Reuters

The United States has dispatched its aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush to the Persian Gulf accompanied by a cruiser and a destroyer, both armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles. Iran has its own missiles which it can deploy should it wish to in defence of Baghdad. But the simple fact is, U.S.-trained Iraqi Shia military troops simply turned tail and ran when they were confronted by the ISIS extremists. The U.S. cannot consider blasting Iraqi cities with cruise missiles for civilian damage.

The ISIS militias tend to move stealthily within civilian populations; it is a specialty of terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and ISIS, to integrate themselves for cover into heavily populated areas as shields against attacks from their perceived enemies. When they lob off missiles at their enemies and the response is a counter-missile that kills civilians, the tactic employed is to blame their enemies for human rights abuses.

A carbon copy of what Syria manages to pull off with the help of the United Nations.

But President Barack Obama claims he believes in a "brief window to pursue diplomacy", anticipating that Shiite militias will stand their ground in Baghdad, and not evaporate in terror as they did in Mosul and Tikrit. Where, as usually happens in the Middle East and North Africa, munitions that the United States gives to those whom they support in the war against terror, end up in the hands of the terrorists.

The best-laid plans of mice and men....