A shot across Iran's bow

We wonder if Iran's power-mad mullahs heard the shot across their bow delivered earlier this week by the United States and Israel.

In a news briefing, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected the notion that the United States was too bogged down in Iraq to take military action if a crisis developed elsewhere. In the context of questions about Iran's nuclear weapons development program, Rumsfeld let it be known that contingency plans are in the works to deal with any potential threat to U.S. or global security.

Meanwhile, acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said "under no circumstances can Israel allow someone with hostile intentions against us to have control over weapons of mass destruction that can endanger our existence."

No one can reasonably argue that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, doesn't have hostile intentions. After proclaiming a policy to "wipe Israel off the map," he moved to make good on the threat, embarking on a uranium enrichment program necessary to developing an atomic weapon. The EU3 - Britain, France and Germany - broke off talks. There was nothing to negotiate anymore.

Israel can't afford to let Iran go nuclear. The last dictator to rant like Ahmadinejad was Hitler. The world should have learned from the Nazi Fhrer that virulent anti-Semitism cannot be ignored. It must be confronted.

This is the message Israel and the United States are sending - not just to Iran, but to the other major players as well. The EU3 needs to show some real backbone now that talks have broken down, and insist with the United States that the U.N. Security Council impose sanctions. Sanctions are a start. More may be required later.

Iran is presenting precisely the kind of crisis the United Nations was created to deal with. If the United Nations can't even try to rein in a rogue nation threatening a nuclear holocaust, then the organization has no reason to exist. The main obstacles to U.N. sanctions, Russia and China, should be isolated with Iran as long as they continue on their stubborn course.

If Russia is threatened with being kicked out of the powerful Group of Eight nations, and China is booted from the World Trade Organization, they're likely to become a lot less enthusiastic about protecting Ahmadinejad.

Iran may be brought to heel short of a military crisis, but not if China and Russia stand in the way of hard-line diplomacy. Nations that are not part of the solution must also be treated like pariahs.