The United Nations Security Council’s deadline for Iran to cease enriching uranium came and went with little more than a bombastic Iranian response, clearing the way for sanctions to be imposed upon Iran.  However, those sanctions will not go into effect immediately, if they ever actually will go into effect.

It’s more of the same from the feckless United Nations and the member-states who make decisions and fail to abide by them.  When states who voted in favor of the proposed sanctions if Iran did not comply start to have second doubts, it turns the validity of the UNSC on its head and renders it impotent.

The official IAEA report is scheduled to be delivered to the UNSC as soon as today, and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Financial Times Iran was “overwhelmingly likely to miss a UN deadline on Wednesday to suspend enrichment.”  In fact, ElBaradei’s report is reportedly going to detail how Iran is close to industrial enrichment.  It is that industrial capacity, ElBaradei maintains, that is the “point of no return.”

So on the day the deadline passed, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lashed out at the UNSC and whom he sees runs the opposition to Iran’s ‘peaceful’ nuclear program.

“The West was used to dealing with governments that submitted to their impositions while now it has found a government like Iran’s which ignors its warnings and continues to follow its road.”

“Our attitude has wounded Westerners who have decided to react with rage,” he added.

I suppose Ahmadinejad’s own rhetoric of destruction of a number of nations was not rage, but rather calmly collected thought from an irrational mind.

In an interview with the Financial Times conducted a few days ago, which I cannot locate at this point in time, ElBaradei stated there’s little question any potential crisis could be averted if Iran merely was transparent.  He also argued for direct talks between Tehran and Washington D.C., however I still don’t see how that could solve anything when Iran’s nuclear program has rankled many nations and not just the United States.  It is quite striking how nations within the Middle East have formed remarkable alliances in response to what they see as an Iranian threat.