The debate is already informed. In fact, it is blindingly obvious.

The odds that Russia and China will even support bringing the issue to Chapter 7 are doubtful. The IAEA Director is against it and against sanctions. I believe many of the IAEA Board diplomats are against it. Almost everybody thinks the IAEA should continue to spearhead negotiations, not the UNSC, regardless of Iran's supposed "intransigence" or "foot dragging."

Sanctions? No chance. Supposedly the Iranians have already been told this by Russia. So why bother bringing it to Chapter 7 if you can't even get sanctions, let alone authorization for the use of force.

Is the goal to bring it to Chapter 7 status just to be able to make "demands" of Iran? Iran has already said, "Demand and be damned" in nearly so many words.

At the same time, they continue to make continual offers of negotiation via the IAEA and elsewhere - even to the United States - which Bush steadfastly rejects.

The Russians and Chinese aren't stupid and neither are the Iranians. They know perfectly well what the Bush/neocon/Israeli game plan is - regime change. The entire nuclear "crisis" has been manufactured out of whole cloth. Anybody who reads the latest IAEA report on Iran can see absolutely NO basis for sanctions, let alone military force. It's just ridiculous. No other NPT signatory in similar circumstances has ever had to be threatened in the manner Iran has.

Can any of the pundits here even address that fact?

Anybody who cannot explicitly talk about the fact that regime change is the subtext of this entire issue is not qualified to talk about it at all. Certainly talking around the regime change issue is disingenuous at best and intellectually dishonest as well.

As Matt Yglesias says, anybody who ignores the fact that the Bush administration had decided on invading Iraq well before the last few months of supposed "diplomacy" and hand-wringing in that instance is going to be ham-strung in discussing the Iranian situation.

Bush is correct about one thing - the UN is IRRELEVANT in this issue - because Bush will make it so.

If the UN wants to get involved in the Iranian issue, then the first thing it must do is DEMAND that the US negotiate directly with Iran (and in concert with the EU and the IAEA or the UNSC) concerning security guarantees, concerning the situation in Iraq, concerning support for groups such as Hizballah, and concerning establishing an internationally transparent Iranian nuclear energy program with US and EU assistance - as is provided for in the NPT.

Both direct negotiations and providing assistance to a non-nuclear state in the development of a nuclear energy program are explicitly recognized in the NPT Treaty and should be emphasized as paths to peaceful resolution of the Iranian issue.

The UN must also DEMAND that Israel's nuclear arsenal be put on the table as an issue to be discussed by the Security Council - if Iran is to be on the table. The issue is a nuclear free zone in the Middle East.

If Iran cannot have nukes, neither can Israel. It's that simple.

Anything else is the rankest hypocrisy and Iran would be correct to ignore UN resolutions which ignore the Israeli nuclear arsenal.

And it is not relevant that Israel is not an NPT signatory either. I'm sure the UN can find other treaties or international laws governing that situation.

If there is no such resolution, then at least Iran should be assured by the US, the EU and the UN that no Israeli unilateral aggression against them - nuclear or otherwise - would be tolerated by the world's powers. How this could be conveyed in a form that would satisfy the Iranians is a matter for development and negotiation. It could also be tied to resolution of Iranian support for groups such as Hizballah.

The UN - either through the UNSC or the IAEA - should also make clear to the world that ANY unilateral military action against Iran without UN authorization will be an international war crime and subject the aggressor to international economic sanctions. And that the UN Charter and its reference in the IAEA Preamble also states that THREATENING military action against a nation without authorization is also illegal.

With all that out of the way, then serious negotiations about how to insure that Iran has no need for and no ability to secretly develop nuclear weapons can be conducted. The goal is to allow Iran to develop a full-scale industrial nuclear energy program while at the same time using whatever technical or political means exist to insure with any reasonableness that their technology cannot and will not be diverted to military use.

The negotiations should be oriented more toward insuring that Iran has no need of such weapons and technically does not have the means to produce them (e.g., by only using centrifuges that are not capable of enriching uranium to weapons grade, if feasible) rather than political resolutions that involve inspections and the like - because it may be argued that inspections can always be curtailed by Iran arbitrarily.

The negotiations should in other words emphasize technical solutions and "carrot" rather than "big stick" approaches. It should also emphasize regional political adjustments relative to Israel's nuclear arsenal and the US position via-a-vis Iran to insure that Iran feels no need to be concerned about either regime change or unilateral aggression by the US or Israel, and therefore no need to develop nuclear weapons.

Call me when any of this is even remotely possible with George Bush at the helm...