Jamie Fly recounts recent statements from China and Russia on the subject of sanctions on Iran and finds:

The only broad consensus on Iran is that between Russia and China and it is that they will not support meaningful sanctions anytime soon. It is important to remember that this comes after Iran was revealed to be building a covert enrichment facility and after the IAEA once again criticized Iran for not providing information about its pre-2003 weaponization research. If that doesn’t convince Russia and China to support sanctions, what will?

The notion that we were going to try diplomacy, proceed to sanctions, and then, if necessary, employ “all other options” was the fig leaf under which the Obami apologists operated. Obama wasn’t naive, we were told. He was methodical!  We had to show deference to the mullahs, avoid taking sides in the election and shove the Iranian democracy advocates under the bus so we could get to the bargaining table with the Iranian regime. Well, that’s proven to be farce. We had been told that we had to “exhaust diplomatic options” to get the Chinese and Russians on board. They aren’t, and won’t be, on board. We have, however, frittered away another year and lost any semblance of credibility on the issue.

The Obami have already tried to talk down any military option: won’t be a permanent solution (what — like a deal shipping out a portion of uranium for enrichment?), very complicated stuff, lots of bad things will happen. We’ve heard the muttering already for some time. So now the threat of a military option must seem a whole lot less credible to the mullahs.

Now that each premise of the Obama approach to Iran has been proven faulty and the Obami have convinced the Iranians of our unseriousness, what next? Well, some of us have expected for a time that we’ll hear a whole lot about “containment” of Iran’s nuclear capability. After all, what options are left? That, one suspects, has been the endgame all along. And if you prefer the other explanation — that the Obami imagined all the genuflecting would actually work — then you must acknowledge this as the greatest national security failure of the Obama administration — or any administration in recent memory.