Daily Inspiration Quote by Igor Ivanov

“Automatic” is doing the heavy lifting here, a lawyerly tripwire disguised as principle. Igor Ivanov’s line, delivered in the pressure-cooker diplomacy before the 2003 Iraq invasion, isn’t just a procedural quibble about Resolution 1441; it’s a bid to keep the United States from converting ambiguity into a blank check. The phrase “does not give anyone the right” frames force not as a tragic necessity but as a presumptive overreach, an attempt to preempt the rhetorical move that a prior UN warning equals permission to strike.

The subtext is power management. By insisting the “Iraqi problem should be regulated by the Security Council,” Ivanov is defending a system where Russia’s veto is not a formality but a strategic asset. The appeal to the Council’s “main responsibility” sounds like civics, but it’s also an assertion of institutional jurisdiction: if war is going to happen, Moscow wants it routed through a forum where it can slow, shape, or trade its consent.

This is why the wording works: it weaponizes the UN’s own grammar. “Regulated” suggests technical governance rather than moral crusade, cooling the temperature of a debate that Washington framed in urgent, near-apocalyptic terms. Ivanov’s rhetoric positions Russia as the steward of international order, casting unilateralism as a breach of security architecture, not merely a disagreement over Iraq. It’s diplomacy as constitutional argument: not denying the problem, denying the shortcut.