Curious editorial...

from the Washington Post.

WaPo, not known in journalism circles as Sam Huntington's mouthpiece, says that the US -- indeed the West (they capitalized it, not me!) -- needs to demonstrate that "sticks as well as carrots remain in the multilateral initiative."

The problem with this is that Washington and the West need to postulate a few things: first, that Russia and China will agree to a sanctions regime, and themselves comply. If sanctions wouldn't work in Iraq -- the Oil-For-Food program was a joke, and even France was busy undermining it, to say nothing of Russia and China -- why should anyone expect that they would work in Iran? If anything, the Iranians can do "more with less." Assuming China and Russia comply (highly unlikely), the Iranian regime is already too far along on its program.

The last line of the Post's editorial is helpful: "Until his government is disabused of the notion that there is no cost in defying the West, his response to new offers will be more of the same rhetoric."

The problem is that at this point, there is no cost in defying the West. The militaries of the West are busy, those who would support sanctions would be the same ones undermining them, and, as Ahmadinejad correctly pointed out recently, sanctions would hurt other countries far more than they would hurt Iran.