Security Council members expressed “unanimous concern” about Islamic State's use of chemical weapons in Iraq — then blocked a Russia-China resolution to investigate. Why?

Russia and China have teamed up once again in the U.N. Security Council — and this time they called a rather embarrassing bluff.

On Friday, Moscow and Beijing proposed that a United Nations panel investigating chemical weapons use in Syria be extended to Iraq, a proposal that was immediately rejected by the U.K.

If it's only Islamic State that used chemical weapons, why not investigate?

This came as a bit of a shock, because earlier the Security Council had expressed "unanimous concern" about Islamic State's use of chemical weapons in Iraq.

As AFP reports:

Security Council members expressed “unanimous concern” about the latest information concerning IS’s use of chemical weapons, according to British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, who chaired the talks. Russia and China then presented a draft resolution that “seeks to expand the work of the Joint Investigative Mechanism to Iraq,” Rycroft said, adding that Britain opposes the measure. “The UK pointed out that there were many differences between the situation in Iraq and Syria,” he said.

Rycroft claims that the reason the U.K. opposed the measure is because the Iraqi government is "fully cooperating" with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

That's odd logic. If the Iraqi government is fully cooperating with the U.N., then surely they would be open to investigating chemical weapon attacks by Islamic State?

The proposal was suggested during a Security Council discussion "about the battle of Mosul, where Iraqi forces are fighting Daesh group jihadists".

Reading between the lines, it seems like there's really only two good reasons why the U.K. would block this proposal:

1. For whatever odd reason, the U.K. does not want investigators to be snooping around the ongoing carnage in Mosul

Or:

2. "Unanimous concern" is a meaningless baloney phrase used to feign outrage about atrocities in non-western countries

We suppose a third possibility is that "someone else" has been using chemical weapons in Mosul.

At any rate, Russia and China just caught the West in a big, embarrassing and shameful lie — and anyone who's paying attention can see the double-standards and hypocrisy.

This is just the latest diplomatic team victory for Beijing and Moscow. Expect many more.