Nearing midnight.(AT WAR)

THE U.N. Security Council's deadline for Iran to stop enriching uranium has passed, but the centrifuges at Natanz are still spinning. That Iran defied the deadline should surprise no one. What does surprise us is that the president who swore he would not "permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons" does not show more urgency in fulfilling that pledge.

The U.S. is holding off on seeking sanctions through the U.N. while European negotiators make a last-ditch effort to sweet-talk the mullahs into pacifism. That might be worth a try if they hadn't spent the last four years trying it. Coming now, it's simply a display of weakness. If the Security Council were worth its name, Iran would have seen, at the moment of the deadline's expiry, a resolution authorizing tough punitive measures. Instead, it sees a Security Council incapable of anything but fruitless and feckless diplomacy, and a United States apparently resolved to this irresolution.

An oil blockade could hurt the regime, but it is also a diplomatic impossibility. And Russia and China will refuse to support even modest sanctions. Russia in particular has hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in the construction of an Iranian nuclear reactor. Both nations promised the U.S. that they would back sanctions if Iran failed to halt enrichment--and show not the slightest intention of keeping their word.

We would be fools to take comfort in a recent International Atomic Energy Agency report suggesting that Iran's enrichment activities are proceeding slowly and producing uranium of a quality too low for weaponization. Given enough time, the regime will build its nukes. The paramount mission of the Bush administration in its remaining ...