Repeated threatening statements from Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have persuaded other countries that Iran intends to become a nuclear power and might not hesitate either to use nuclear weapons or to transfer them to terrorists. The international community has to choose between two repellant options: allowing Iran to become a nuclear power or taking military action to prevent that nightmare.

If such a choice is to be avoided, a coalition of major powers, including Russia and China, will have to be welded together. The immediate task is to decipher Iran’s aim in escalating toward a crisis. Its resumption of uranium enrichment is tantamount to daring the IAEA to refer Iran’s case to the UN Security Council for punitive action. Iran’s leaders will have to be confronted with a stark choice of their own. There should also be an intensive effort to inform people inside Iran that the regime is lying to them when it pretends that foreigners want to deny Iran its right to civil nuclear power.

If those officials do not respond to such limited sanctions, council members should be prepared to call another of the regime’s bluffs by imposing sanctions not on Iran’s exporting of crude oil but on the importing of refined oil products into Iran, a measure that could quickly cripple the corruption-ridden economy.