A U.N. vote on Iran nuclear sanctions will likely be pushed back because of fallout from the Israeli raid on the Gaza aid flotilla, sources said Wednesday. The Obama administration had been planning to bring a new Iran sanctions resolution to a vote at the U.N. Security Council on Thursday but diplomatic sources said the vote is not likely to take place this week.

This is the danger and fallacy of linkage, that is, the idea that progress in the “peace process” is needed for progress in halting Iran’s nuclear weapons. If you propagate the notion that the peace process must be advanced in order to deal with other Middle East problems — including the most critical one, which extends beyond the Middle East — you hold our Iran policy hostage to factors beyond our control. Iran-backed terrorists stage a confrontation, Iranian-influenced nations (Syria, Turkey) scream for Israeli blood, and international organizations refuse to address Iranian hegemonic and nuclear ambitions. In essence, Iranian surrogates wind up with a veto power over our efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

This episode should also confirm the pitfalls of waiting for international consensus in order to deal with a fundamental threat to our own security. The entire notion that we would wait for UN sanctions and then the EU before pursuing U.S. sanctions against Iran has proven ludicrous. At each stage, there is delay and the opportunity for mischief, and at each stage more and more carve-outs pop up. At the root of this is a fundamental strategic error, namely that international consensus can replace the use of the full array of tools in the U.S. arsenal.

By casting Iran’s nuclear capability as primarily Israel’s problem (rather than one for the entire West), by conditioning progress in Iran’s nuclear threat on progress in a peace process doomed to failure, and by placing our fate and our own credibility in multilateral institutions, we have made both our tasks (promoting resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and thwarting Iran) infinitely more difficult.  Now we have two failed diplomatic efforts. We continue to witness the steady ascendancy of Iran and its cohort of nation-states and surrogates. How’s that smart diplomacy working out?