Here we go again. With all the charm that has marked his previous three visits to the annual opening of the UN General Assembly in New York, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad picked the historically freighted date of Sept. 11 to confirm that yes, indeed, he’s coming b-a-a-a-a-c-k … to take the UN stage on Sept. 23.

There are plans for a “Wall of Shame” demonstration near the UN in Manhattan, with protestors calling for the Iranian regime to be held to account for its repression and atrocities. But that wall will end when Ahmadinejad steps inside the UN gates, to enter the sacrosanct UN-world, in which accountability is a concept reserved almost exclusively for the likes of the UN’s chief sugar-daddy, the United States. For Ahmadinejad, representing a terrorist-backing regime that is in violation by now of three UN Security Council resolutions meant to stop Iran’s nuclear bomb program, the UN will provide diplomatic entry to Manhattan, and a world stage with a golden backdrop in the grand council of nations.

This in turn will provide the usual springboard for Ahmadinejad to wine and dine select members of the media, give interviews, swagger around town and gloat over the “Death to Israel! Death to America!” vision to which Tehran’s mullocracy dedicates so many of its resources (never mind the economic trainwreck back home in Iran). Will Ahmadinejad make another attempt to visit the site of the World Trade Center? Will he make one of his trademark calls for the annihilation of Israel? Will he thrill to intimations of the apocalypse while addressing the eminences at Turtle Bay?

We need not wait long to find out. The Ahma-mushroom-cloud road show returns soon. And with it, the question – How, exactly, does it serve America’s interests to bankroll and host the UN (now enjoying a $2 billion headquarters renovation) in the heart of New York?