The answer Mr. WaPo Editorial Writer is : NOTHING. We can do nothing.

The Iranian president, who is not his country's principal leader, has managed to distract attention from a question more urgent than his rhetoric about the Holocaust and Israel. That is, what can now be done by the U.N. Security Council or Western governments to revive the flagging diplomatic campaign to stop Iran's nuclear program?

NADA, NOTHING, RIEN CHOSES, baby.

The USA, the West can do nothing.

The Iranians are convinced we will do nothing forceful, and that if we do we will lose since god is on their side. After all we are the enemy of the godly, Islam, peace, justice and the Iranian way. Say, isn't that what George Soros (and therefore Moveon, the Open Society Institute, and perhaps even their captive larger major national party) says?

The Mullahs have no interest in stopping. I don't know how this can be any more obvious.

Three Security Council resolutions and two rounds of sanctions have failed to prevent Iran from installing and testing thousands of centrifuges to enrich uranium. As France's new foreign minister has recognized, the danger is growing that the United States and its allies could face a choice between allowing Iran to acquire the capacity to build a nuclear weapon and going to war to prevent it.The only way to avoid facing that terrible decision is effective diplomacy -- that is, a mix of sanctions and incentives that will induce Mr. Ahmadinejad's superiors to suspend their race for a bomb. Yet the governments that claim to be most opposed to war are also standing in the way of more effective sanctions. Russia and China are resisting another U.N. resolution and instead have seized on a diversion supplied by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Mr. El Baradei struck a separate deal to obtain by year's end Iran's answers to questions about its nuclear work.

The Iranians have complete control. In 1979 they claimed the USA can't do a damned thing (unless we were willing to killemall). Convenient when you can depend civility by your enemy, eh? And today, unless we are willing to go to war, there IS nothing we can do as well. War is questionable as well. But there are ways.

Maybe we can point out the last two homosexuals in Iran.

Worse, the Russians and Chinese have no intention of letting the UN act in the way of preventing nuclear proliferation, since they have OBVIOUSLY come to the galactically erroneous conclusion that what is bad for us is good for them. As I have pointed out many times, this means that clouds of Cesium 137 and Strontium 90 coming to ground over Siberia and Sinkiang must mean little to them.

I am sorry that WaPo is to be frustrated on this, truly. But so long as the Mullahs have decided it is more important to get nuclear weapons than avoid war, war cannot be avoided