Dangerous Times, Dangerous People.

It's hard to work out or quantify what exactly John Bolton has achieved in his epic struggle to have Iran censured at the UN.

The United Nations Security Council has unanimously approved a statement calling on Iran to fully suspend all uranium-enrichment activities.

The full 15-member Security Council backed the text by consensus late on March 29, after several weeks of negotiations among the council's five permanent, veto-holding members -- Russia, the United States, China, France, and Britain.

On the surface this sounds quite impressive, but if you look beneath, you have to honestly ask yourself what has actually changed.

Certainly not the ambivalence of Iran to any UN censure.

Iran's UN Ambassador Javad Zarif said his government would respond to the Security Council statement, but he warned that "Iran is a country that is allergic to pressure and to threats and intimidation".

"Iran is committed to non-proliferation and Iran does not want to produce nuclear weapons", he said, but "Iran insists on its right to have access to nuclear technology for explicitly peaceful purposes. We will not abandon that claim to our legitimate right."

So the next logical step for the US would be to seek to have Iran sanctioned, but all the signs are that Russia and China would immediately veto any measure of that sort.

So the real question is what will the US do next if Iran do, indeed, continue with nuclear proliferation and China and Russia balk at sanctions.

I have long thought that, despite the noises coming from the Bush administration, that military action - with the US occupying Iraq - is an absolute non-starter, although with the current raft of lunatics in charge anything remains possible.

As I have argued here, I think the US is taking a huge risk pursuing Iran, whilst still occupying Iraq, and as I've argued here, we are open to the charge of hypocrisy.

The Bushites are storming along a path and it's becoming evident that, besides having no idea where this path is leading us all, they actually have no plan in motion for what to do when their enthusiastic mission meets inevitable resistance.

At that point, it's going to become evident that Bush has no plan B. And the swaggering little man in the White House will not know how to back off.

The real danger here is that Bush, through his lack of an overall strategy, may end up leading us to war through the back door.

These are dangerous times, and we are being led by dangerous people.

Tags: Iran, US, UK, United Nations, Security Council, Veto, Sanctions,