Over to you, Hu…

As anyone remotely paying attention for the last two years could have told you, Iran’s effort to develop nuclear weapons now lies uncommfortably in the laps of Beijing and Moscow. It was as a sop to the United States and its European allies that both agreed to give Iran the 60 day grace period to come into compliance with the Security Council’s demand that it cease its uranium enrichment program. That grace period ended yesterday. Predictably, Tehran did nothing to stand down ints program, and in fact is farther along than the IAEA (the UN’s nuke monitoring agency) had thought.
The United States and its European allies now seek tougher sanctions against Iran–and in any event will move outside the UN to disrupt capital flows into the country by levying penalties on banks that do business with the Ahmadinejad & Co. But months ago Moscow and Beijing, both UN security council members, said they would not agree to harsher sanctions against Iran. Now the question is front and center: what will China and Russia do?
China is now basking in the warm glow of the latest alleged “agreement” to get North Korea to back off its weapons program. It is said to have played an important role in forcing all involved in the six party talks to move toward a deal. Will Beijing now turn around, in the face of Iran’s utter defiance of the good and great United Nations– the international arbiter of all things right and just on the globe, to whom the Chinese routinely pledge featly–and say, in effect: you know what, we don’t really care if Iran gets nukes. We need its oil and gas too badly. What the hell. Go for it Mahmoud…
And as Hu JIntao ponders this decision, that sound he hears in the background is of Israeli bombers…revving their engines.