Iran continues ...

Just a few days ago, Iran publicly hailed the U.S. Navy's timely rescue of 13 Iranian fishermen held captive for 40 days by Somali pirates as "a humanitarian gesture."

"We welcome this behavior," a spokesman for Tehran's foreign ministry said.

But what did Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government then actually do?

It sentenced an imprisoned American-Iranian to death on trumped-up espionage charges.

And then it announced that it has begun enriching uranium - a key step in developing nuclear weapons - at an underground facility.

The death sentence against 28-year-old Amir Mizraei Hekmati, a former military translator who's been held since August, is the first imposed on a U.S. citizen since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Whether the sentence ever will be carried out is an open question. History suggests such things are more theater than threat.

Not so the Iranian bomb.

Indeed, the truly disturbing - though not unexpected - news is the confirmation by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has switched on a uranium-processing plant tunneled deeply inside a mountain.

The European Union seems set to impose an oil embargo on Iran. Even without China on board, Tehran is hurting.

But not hurting enough to shelve its nuclear program.

D-Day for stronger action grows perilously closer each day.

- The New York Post