This is diplomacy to be disdained, actually.

Read carefully: All the Security Council has done here is threaten to threaten Iran — not actually to do anything, and much less to impose sanctions.

To recap, at the end of May, the administration officially reversed the long-standing policy against direct talks with with our enemies, the Iranians, and in the process offered a sweeping basket of goodies with no reciprocal requirement that the mullahs stop fomenting terrorism, in direct violation of the Bush Doctrine. (I wrote about it here.)

What was the justification for that? It was said to be that by showing this reasonableness, the State Department had achieved consensus within the Security Council about sanctions to be imposed in the event of Iranian instransigence. The Washington Post reported on June 2: “Aides to [Secretary of State] Rice said the deal also commits China and Russia to a long list of specific steps to punish Iran if it refuses to halt its enrichment program.”

Right. China and Russia have signalled almost from Jump Street that they have agreed to no such thing. (See, e.g., here, here and here.) Remarkably, the State Department caved in the other day when China threatened to disrupt this phony harmony: the U.S. agreed to a Security Council statement chastising Israel for its accidental strike against the UN installation in Lebanon. As if this appeasement means China is actually going to support sanctions against Iran when Ahmadinejad tells the Security Council to pound sand on August 22.

Speaking of which, note that the Security Council’s fearless threat to threaten, which must have the mullahs truly quaking in their shoes, gives Iran until the end of August to comply, rather than demanding compliance now. This of course gives Ahmadinejad even more build-up for his much anticipated August 22 chest-beating — guaranteeing the he will look even better in the eyes of the Islamofascist world when he laughs off the demand. Great. (By the way, the date of August 22, which Ahmadinejad picked to thumb his nose at the U.S. and our “partners,” is Islamically significant. Robert Spencer explains why — in alarming fashion – here. But hey, we wouldn’t want to consider that the ideology we are fighting might have anything to do with what the principal terror masters are up to.)

Not to worry, though. When it gets down to crunch time, our friends the Russians and the Chinese will be right there with us. After all, the State Department will tell you that they, like we, have an abiding interest in global stability … at least when the Chinese are not arming the Iranians with missiles for Hezbollah, and the Russians are not selling information technology to North Korea and — today — about $4billion worth of weapons to to our good buddy Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.