The time has come for American pundits and policy makers to start taking Iran's leaders at their word, plain and simple.

West must not cower before Iran

The latest word, issued from Tehran this week, is that the Iranian government will proceed with development of its uranium-enrichment program, but they are happy to keep talking with those who are opposed to it.

It's not exactly a new situation. Iran has openly defied the United Nation's Security Council for a few years now. The debate is over - the ruling mullahs are intent on achieving the ability to produce nuclear weapons, the ultimate purpose of enriching uranium.

The question now is how will the West, and more specifically, the Security Council, respond? The West is once again in a paper tiger position, with no teeth to its policies. Just as Saddam Hussein ignored well over a dozen resolutions from the U.N., even profiteering from the oil-for-food program, Iran's theocracy has been making monkeys out of Western diplomats who have tried to dissuade the country from its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

There has long been a fundamental delusion in the West that it is dealing with an ordinary sovereign nation when it engages the Islamic Republic of Iran. There has been an obtuse inability to absorb and understand the openly hostile stance of Iran's theocracy toward the U.S. and Israel in particular.

That hostility stretches back 25 years, when the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was stormed and Americans were taken hostage for 444 days. The U.S. response to that outrage was pathetically weak.

And little has changed since, even though Iran's leaders have routinely spewed vitriolic rhetoric toward "The Great Satan" known as the United States and have called for an expansion of Islamic rule throughout the Middle East.

Iran's leaders have issued fatwas urging murders of people, such as author Salmon Rushdie. They have repeatedly pledged to wipe Israel off the map. They have long exported violence to neighboring lands, most recently Iraq, and for years has openly supported a proxy army in Lebanon - Hezbollah - that has waged attacks against the United States and Israel.

But there are still some who seem to wonder what's the problem with a nuclear Iran. There are still some who support continued conventional diplomatic relations with Iran, as if it were just a troublesome, ill-tempered nation, rather than a bona-fide threat.

Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" surely didn't seem to recognize Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a threat during a recent interview that was widely considered an uncharacteristically soft approach for the famous bulldog journalist.

Glora Eiland, Israel's former national security adviser, sees things a bit more clearly. The Iranian president, Eiland said this week, "has a religious conviction that Israel's demise is essential to the restoration of Muslim glory, that the Zionist thorn in the heart of the Islamic nations must be removed. And he will pay almost any price to right the perceived historic wrong. If he becomes the supreme leader and has nuclear capability, that's a real threat."

You bet it is. But nobody wants war with Iran.

So the Security Council faces a familiar question once again. Will it pursue true, punishing sanctions against Iran, or will it bend like a paper tiger blowing in the wind?