Also, at San Francisco Chronicle, "Iran's endgame is long overdue":
The International Atomic Energy Agency released documents last month that finally removed nearly all doubt that Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapons. And yet, as the world angrily reacts, all we hear from Russia and China, Iran's consistent defenders, is shameful bleating.
In fact, two days after the atomic energy agency released its report, Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's nuclear-energy corporation, announced that Russia was prepared to begin building new civilian nuclear reactors in Iran. Then Russia's U.N. ambassador declared: "The sanctions track in the Security Council has been exhausted."
He offered instead the ludicrous observation that "negotiations should continue with Iran." A couple of weeks earlier, a new WikiLeaks disclosure showed that China has been facilitating shipments of ballistic-missile components from North Korea to Iran. And China's foreign ministry offered similar sophistry: resolve the problem with "dialogue and negotiations."
Even after all that has happened, those two states are still threatening to wield their veto in the Security Council. So it's imperative that the United States and Europe act on their own.
Israel's defense minister told CNN last month that Iran is less than a year away from completing work on a bomb. Some American officials say Israel's estimates are often exaggerated. Still, the fact remains that this dance with Iran has been under way for almost 10 years. It's well past time to bring it to a close.
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