When a sanction is... not a sanction!

In a humorous, yet accurate, article in the New York Times, Helene Cooper, September 3, 2006, "A Deadline That's is less Than It Seems", [see also the post "EU has now a deadline for the mullahs? It’s tomorrow! No wait, maybe next month…", July 4] ridicules the western nations' effort, including that of the United States, to bring the mullahs in front of the UNSC (again) for punishment- at least initially in the form of sanctions. She finds the idiotic posturing by the EU to give Iran another two weeks beyond the August 31, 2006 deadline- just passed- to, we suppose, coincide with the beginning of the UN General Assembly annual love fest, quite formulatory and posits three questions: 1) with the US unitaleral sanctions against Iran in place, just how much staying power or influence would the US have at the UN?, 2) what sanctions could the rest of the SC or the world bring against the mullahs that would not hurt them more than they would hurt the mullahs?, and 3) if the mullahs feel that nuclear weapons are their "inalienable right", would they be even hurt by such "smart sanctions" as travel bans, or care?

Here's what ails the whole process: by not understanding the true nature of Islamic fundamentalism, even after Iraq and Lebanon, and not realizing the essential fact that the only people or group capable of bringing down the illegitimate regime of the mullahs are the Iranian poeple, the United States and the rest of the so-called enlightened world, have engaged in theatrical posturings, intended more to satisfy their own sense of urgency that anything that would seriously hurt the Iranian regime. The enlightened world, is not helped, of course, by the preposterous fakes, such as Bernard Lewis of Princeton, whose dry and falsely academic understanding of what Islamic fundamentalism is, and in how to separate the messianical aims of the Sunni fundamentalism from the Iranian mullahs's version, a far more serious and deadly one.