(Update) The Emerging North Korea of the Middle East?

(" Iran is expanding its uranium enrichment program," reports the AP, "even as the U.N. Security Council focuses on possible sanctions for its defiance of a demand to give up the activity and ease fears it seeks nuclear weapons….") USA Today has a good editorial on Russian complicity in Iran's nuclear program.

It took the explosion of a nuclear bomb by North Korea - fortunately just a test - for China to start enforcing sanctions and applying pressure in a way that suggests it finally grasps the proliferation dangers, to itself, the region and the world, that its erratic neighbor represents. It might take a nuclear bomb in Iran to wake Russia up in the same way - and then it could be too late. Moscow is to Iran what Beijing is to North Korea: a great power neighbor with so much economic and political influence that it could, almost single-handedly, close the rogue regime's nuclear weapons program. On Saturday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Moscow hoping to turn the "momentum" of sanctions against North Korea into similar action against Iran. Russia was having none of it. "We won't be able to support and will oppose any attempts to use the Security Council to punish Iran" to promote regime change, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. What's happening is that Russian President Vladimir Putin's agenda is driven by a single obsession: to regain as much of the former Soviet Union's superpower status (and territory) as possible. Iran holds a key to restoring Russia's once-considerable influence in the Middle East. The two have strong trade ties, and Moscow is helping Iran build a nuclear power plant. So other priorities have shrunk to invisibility, including Russia's once-intense interest in deterring the spread of nuclear weapons….

Of course, Russia isn't alone in coddling Iran. Beijing has done its share. Moreover, China could put much more economic and political pressure on Pyongyang. There's also the question of how vigilant Beijing will be in enforcing the sanctions regime against the North. Still, some progress is better than none.