VIENNA, June 6 -- The question Mikhail Ulyanov posed at the extraordinary session of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors on Thursday was not rhetorical. If Western governments can spend an entire year pretending that strikes on safeguarded nuclear facilities in Iran never happened, what exactly does the global non-proliferation architecture protect?

Russia's permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna told the emergency session that the silence coming from NATO capitals amounted to a political act in itself. "For a whole year, Western countries have been trying to sweep under the rug the fact of attacks on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, including the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant," Ulyanov said...