UNITED NATIONS — Watch this diplomatic countdown. The normally cautious and circumspect International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) holds breathless crisis talks in Vienna and then sends the case of Iran’s nuclear proliferation to the UN Security Council in New York. The fifteen member Council, long awaiting the explosive dossier, now nervously takes the first steps which could lead to meaningful sanctions on Teheran. The mendacious mullahs running the Islamic Republic of Iran put on the usual bluster and bravado threatening the U.S. with “harm and pain” and reminding world markets that Teheran remains a major petroleum exporter and could get really mad.

 

We are into the third act of a morality play which began a few years ago and has seen the European contact group, Britain, France and Germany reach an impasse after drawn out three year negotiations with the Islamic Republic to stop its proscribed nuclear research, a patience which fed feckless diplomacy but equally earned profitable commercial contracts. The Euros may finally see themselves as having been tricked by the mullahs.

Based in intelligence estimates, the United States warned that Teheran had produced sufficient uranium compound to make 10 nuclear bombs if its enrichment program was not stopped. And the British added that the known elements of Iran's nuclear program might be only the "tip of the iceberg".

 

Still the U.S. wisely let diplomacy take its course so as not to be called the trigger happy cowboy, may have earned a bittersweet “I told you so” from the Europeans, but then what? Can the fifteen member UN Security Council, the tribunal of last resort, pass serious and stinging sanctions against a regime who’s made privation a virtue and revels in neo-messianic confrontation?

 

The political pyrotechnics now coming out of Teheran merits careful attention not so much because it’s novel but since Iran may see itself holding strong cards in a pending confrontation with the U.S. and Europe. Moreover the Iranians could actually believe that in the arcane political calculus of the UN Security Council, either Russia or the People’s Republic of China, both countries with close commercial ties and energy links to Iran, will use their veto to shoot down any serious sanctions.

 

The Council will likely take incremental steps to pressure Iran into compliance; once serious measures are tabled against Teheran, expect Moscow and Beijing to block them.

 

The perception in Teheran is that the U.S. and Britain are too tied down in the Iraq imbroglio as to launch a military strike on Iran. Beyond this cherished perception in Iran (and much of the Arab world too) remains the not so secret Iranian links to Islamic militants inside Iraq who can turn up the insurgency and civil conflict heat from simmer to medium/high. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned that units of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are already operating in Iraq.

 

In wider context, there’s the Iran terrorist sleeper cells in Western Europe who are far more effective than the Arab rooted terrorism the Euros have had to contend with. And let’s not overlook Europe’s dependence on Iran’s petroleum exports.

 

While the Islamic radicals running Iran can profit by playing the time honored anti-West nationalist card, the clerical regime may be more brittle than assumed. Serious social and economic privations, despite the petroleum wealth, has led to a percolating political situation. Disenchantment and youth unemployment are rife.

 

As this column stated earlier “Iran’s radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has proven himself not as a political crackpot, but as a calculating madman who combines a crude form of hatred of Israel and the West with the political pornography of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. His views are not out of context quotes, but a hateful parallel version of counter-history in which shock value somehow really lessens the effect. In other words, go beyond his revolting rants and realize that such fundamentalist dogma has become an entrenched view and policy position of a country of 70 million people who may soon have an atomic bomb.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran, a regime of self-inflicted darkness, seeks the nuclear genie. Should the Security Council not be able to stop the atomic clock in Teheran, shall the aspiring Atomic Ayatollahs reach their goal and usher in a Middle Eastern DARKNESS AT NOON?