While this weekend’s Iranian rocket launch set off alarm bells in Israel and America, Tehran’s failure to boast about the apparently successful Shahab-3 test was an even bigger shock.

The Iranian press, which usually crows over such tests, was quiet over the weekend, a senior researcher at the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies in Israel, Tal Inbar, told the Web site for the Israeli daily Ma’ariv.

A successful test of a rocket that can disrupt satellites and be used as an intercontinental missile is “significant beyond mere propaganda,” he said.

But while a lot of Israelis see Iran appeasers as modern-day Neville Chamberlains, many at the United Nations reflexively oppose any form of coercive pressure on U.N. member states.

“Sanctions are deadly,” reads one roadside billboard, which shows an elephant’s leg wrapped in an American flag trampling on the hopes of some poor folks — who are presumably suffering under economic sanctions against their wayward regime.

A photograph of this anti-sanctions, anti-American billboard, situated in an unidentified country, is posted on the Web site of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, on a page dedicated to the “Humanitarian Impact of Sanctions.” The site quotes a former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, as saying, “Sanctions can have a highly negative impact on civilian populations, especially on vulnerable groups.”

Sanctions can also be instrumental in getting rid of oppressive regimes, as they were in South Africa, Yugoslavia, and Haiti, especially if they are mixed in with other threats. So as Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns embarks on an effort to tighten U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran in London today, Turtle Bay types are warning that America or Israel may soon go beyond sanctions.

They are afraid of statements like this one: “We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table. Let me reiterate — all options must remain on the table.”

Although it is similar to something Vice President Cheney said in Australia over the weekend, the above statement was actually included in a recent address to the Israeli think tank Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya by a Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards.

Iran and its allies are using the specter of a new war in the Middle East to create an anti-sanctions campaign.

Iran “is ready” for talks, its national security adviser, Ali Larijani, said yesterday on a visit to Pretoria, South Africa, at the invitation of President Mbeki. The mullahs will “reciprocally react to the countries intending to aggravate Iran’s nuclear issue,” he added, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

South Africa is set to assume the Security Council’s rotating presidency on Thursday, where it will side with Iran’s allies, Russia and China, and advocate talks rather than punishment for the intransigent Iranian mullahs.

Despite Mr. Larijani’s worldwide tour, however, Iran’s isolation is growing, the Farsi-language broadcasting director for Israel Radio, Menashe Amir, said.

Even when it was building the Iran-India gas pipeline, New Delhi voted against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency, he noted. The Venezuelan-Iranian campaign against the dollar is a failure, and such countries as Brazil, Switzerland, and Japan are joining America in pressuring Iran.

Despite Iran’s reserves of up to $60 billion in foreign currency, economic sanctions imposed by the council — and, even more so, the unilateral sanctions imposed by America and the European Union — hurt the regime, Mr. Amir said. Economic retaliation, meanwhile, is limited because “Iran needs the world more than the world needs Iran.”

But sanctions alone will not suffice, he warned. They may result in, say, an appointment of some self-described “moderate” to replace Mr. Larijani. But nothing short of regime change will result in the end of the Iranian menace.

Over the weekend, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker put out another in his series of dire warnings of imminent Pentagon action against Iran, and the Daily Telegraph reported that Israel has requested an air corridor over Iraq for its planes to launch an attack against the Iranian nuclear installations. Coupled with official denials, such “ambivalent” hints about military action help, Mr. Amir said. So does internal speculation in Iran that America has backed a spate of recent terrorist attacks in the provinces.

“The Iranian people are oppressed. They oppose the regime, but without a signal that the West will back them, they will not rise up,” Mr. Amir said.

But can such an uprising occur before the mullahs attain the military capability to realize their megalomaniacal goals? So far, international diplomacy has been painfully slow, while Iran’s military stride seems to accelerate by the day.