UN Arms Embargo on Eritrea

This is good news, although I am not really sure what good it will do in the long run.

The U.N. Security Council slapped Eritrea with an arms embargo and further sanctions Wednesday for its role in aiding rebels in Somalia and refusing to withdraw from a border dispute with Djibouti.

The council approved the resolution with veto-holder China abstaining and Libya, the current chair of the African Union, as the sole vote against the measure.

The UN is moving to curb arms shipments into Somalia, although I am not sure how effective this will be. Eritrea is widely believed to be one of the major gateways for the Iranian black market into and out of Africa, smuggling that is typically done by sea. Eritrea's claim is that everyone is making it up, beginning with the US, but denials in the face of consistent and at this point overwhelming evidence over a long period of time just makes Eritrea look silly.

This may turn out to be more interesting to watch unfold than you think. The US government has previously linked Eritrea to Iranian arms smuggling, not just for Somalia, but Sudan and Lebanon as well. Could it also be the route used by Iran to smuggle weapons into Yemen as well?

What I find interesting is how much movement globally we are seeing against the countries involved in weapons proliferation, with intelligence being used all of the world to capture various transports from North Korea. The public crackdown on global weapon proliferation is quietly one of the real success stories of the Obama administration in its first year.