It beats as it sweeps and cleans

Our long overdue return visit to our comrades at Pravda gives us this piece on Iranian nuclear derry-do (derring-do?) at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which observes that the big bad EU nations (and the USA) are being mean to Iran by threatening to take the issue of Iran’s purported violations of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to the UN Security Council.
Of course, Iran has already lined up the support of (UN Security Council veto holders) Russia and China, to naysay such a referral in the first place, and prevent too much isolation if it occurs. The Pravda piece notes that India is also interested in joining the side of Iran, should this come to a full international brouhaha, in part, because India is eyeing Iranian gas reserves. Which means that governments representing a huge part of the world’s population are already lining up on the side of… Axis of EvilTM member
Iran.
We have a troubling situation. Our friend and running mate Bruce the Veep notes the ominousness of our overall situation: having shot our wad on a discretionary war in Iraq, which has already cost us stateside in terms of a vastly reduced array of “first responders” in the event of a domestic disaster, we have seriously weakened our own hand in dealing with the rest of the Axis of EvilTM. Hence, observe: North Korea, with which we have recently inked a deal (evidently in erasable ink!) seemingly identical to a “real current food, energy and money in exchange for illusory promises of future behavior” that Republicans blasted the Clinton Administration for entering; and of course, Iran. (We won’t even talk about Pakistan, home of an arsenal of nuclear weapons, millions of hard-ass Islamist fundamentalists, and quite likely, Osama bin Laden. Nope… best not talk about that.)
So, there you have it. It looks like after years of selfish “we’re exceptional so screw the rest of you” chest-banging (for domestic political purposes) thereby pissing off the rest of the world and thereby reducing our moral authority and diplomatic leverage, and after years of squandering our military capacity (on what has proven to be an unnecessary war and will soon prove to be a vastly counterproductive war…) we find our options… limited. A true Macchiavellian might simply suggest that this is all about “money”, and that Russia and China (and even India) just see Iran as a source of investment capital and business opportunity, and if we were only willing to replace those business opportunities, perhaps they would play ball in isolating Iran… Of course, did I mention that we’ve also spent years squandering our economic capacity on non-stimulative tax cuts, and thereby, don’t have that much ability there…? (Picture stepping up to the loan desk at the Bank of Beijing and asking for a multi-billion dollar loan to bribe China with… come to think of it…)
The brave new world, ladies and gentlemen… might just make cowards of us all.