In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, however, the concern among embassy staff is a little more short-term. With the Israeli attack treated as virtually a foregone conclusion by many, the question immediately becomes what happens when Iran inevitably retaliates.

Foreign diplomats stationed in Israel are struggling to make “contingency plans” for the event that Iranian missiles begin flying in retaliation for an Israeli attack, and what they will do not just with their staff, but with their citizens who are in Israel on vacations or business.

It could be a monumental task for some nations, and with even the US unsure that Israel will give them advanced notice, smaller nations have to assume they’ll first hear about the war on TV, or when rockets start falling.

This is a problem in a number of third-world nations where war could break out any minute, but, unlike most third-world nations, Israel has such a massive number of tourists visiting at any given time, and these threats have been ongoing for decades, so the timing is impossible to predict.

The European Union has already conceded that it does not have the means to evacuate all the EU citizens in Israel in a timely fashion if a war breaks out, and the best Israel’s government is offering is a list of public bomb shelters for them to hide in. This is not so reassuring and embassies are likely to be overrun by mobs of their own desperate citizens hoping for safe haven.

“This is not a set of actions designed to lead to any conflict but to lead us away from any conflict by increasing the pressure for peaceful settlement of these disputes,” he said on Tuesday.

Despite years of evidence to the contrary, Hague’s comments passed without an outburst of laughter on the world stage. Washington, and most of the EU, has approached Iran in largely the same way since the Iranian revolution in 1979. That is, with threats, sanctions, and isolation. Instead of bringing diplomacy, it has brought only more bitterness and mistrust.

Early in the Bush administration, sanctions were heaped on Iran’s oil sector. As the relationship with Iran, and Tehran’s position on nuclear enrichment, have stayed the same, tensions and war rhetoric escalated. Now, the Obama administration has placed multiple additional sanctions on Iran’s oil and banking sectors, and it has led to even more bellicosity, not less.

Columbia University Professor Gary Sick, who has a special expertise on Iran, viewed the EU oil embargo much differently. He called the efforts “the equivalent of a blockade. It’s an act of war.”

British FM William Hague defended the move, saying Iran was enriching uranium “to 20 percent, for which there is no possible civilian explanation.” Hague, evidently, was unfamiliar with the US-built Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), which operates on fuel cells using 20 percent enriched uranium to produce medical isotopes.

The latest embargo announcement came after a false announcement earlier this month, in which French FM Alain Juppe claimed a deal was reached and other EU officials denied it a day later.

The embargo could be potentially damaging to a number of EU nations’ economies, Greece in particular, as they will have to find alternative sources of oil. A likely source will be Libya, where Italian oil company Eni has been ratcheting up output. But given increasing instability in Libya, this may not prove a secure source.

EU diplomats are confident that the measure to phase in a total embargo on Iranian oil will be agreed to on Monday, but the move would seriously harm the struggling economies of of Europe like Greece, Italy, Spain, and others who rely on Iranian oil.

The EU has been struggling with the question of whether to impose additional self-inflicted economic pain by cutting off a significant source of oil, primarily for the politics of the U.S. and Iran. The Obama administration has also been pressuring Asian allies like South Korea to participate in the sanctions, despite self-interested concerns for their own economic well-being.

The sanctions are supposedly aimed at curbing Iran’s alleged ambitions to attain nuclear weapons, an ambition Iran denies they harbor. There is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the opinion of theU.S. intelligence community, the Obama administration, and the latest IAEA report is that Iran’s enrichment is so far civilian in nature.

The harsh sanctions on Iran’s oil industry is widely expected to have crippling effects on the economy and thus the well-being of ordinary Iranians who rely on the country’s natural resource market to spur economic growth. Many have pointed to similar sanctions regimes heaped on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the 1990s, which left the country destitute and led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

But the other side of that coin is that countries in the EU, many of whom are facing severe economic crises and whom rely heavily on Iranian imported oil, are being pressured to impose additional self-inflicted economic pain on their own countries by abiding by U.S. demands to ban Iranian oil.

The Obama administration has been sending teams of consultants around the world to give advice on managing the supply and demand of oil, as if they know better than the market.

The sanctions are supposedly aimed at curbing Iran’s alleged ambitions to attain nuclear weapons, an ambition Iran denies they harbor. There is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, and the opinion of theU.S. intelligence community, the Obama administration, and the latest IAEA report is that Iran’s enrichment is so far civilian in nature.

EU officials say that the opposition to the ban has evaporated and that the debate is now moving on to the exact details of it, with the US State Department saying the move will “tighten the noose on Iran economically.”

The announcement is expected to happen by the end of the month, according to French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. The move will force Italy, Greece and Spain to find new sources of supply.

Whether it will have a serious impact on Iran is unclear, as they will likely just sell the oil to Asian powers instead, and the only change will be in the efficiency of trade routes. China in particular has been keen to secure Iranian oil supplies.

The justification for the embargo wasn’t entirely clear, and British officials pushed it as having something to do with the Syrian government’s crackdown on protesters, as well as an attack on the British embassy which US officials have said doesn’t appear to have been backed by the Iranian government.

France blamed the failure to impose the embargo on Greece, which buys considerable oil from Iran. They said efforts to convince everyone of the embargo will continue, with efforts to find Greece another source of oil taking center stage.

So far the anti-Iran sanctions have done considerable damage to the nation’s civilian economy, but has actually bolstered government-owned businesses, which were able to better circumvent the measures. The oil embargo has been controversial because while officials agree it would really stick it to Iran, it would likely also do massive damage to the world’s energy market at a time when the global economy is still struggling.

At issue are the roadblocks in northern Kosovo, set up by Kosovar Serbs to protest the ethnic Albanian dominated government’s efforts (with NATO help) to crush dissent in the north and close the border to all outside trade.

After a bit of haranguing from NATO, Serbian President Boris Tadic has called on the Kosovar Serbs to remove the roadblocks and let NATO close them off from all outside trade. The Kosovar Serbs, who don’t really have any special reason to listen to the president of Serbia, haven’t reacted so far, prompting “deep concern” from NATO officials.

And even though Tadic played ball, his inability to dictate the behavior of other people of the same ethnicity as him has several in the EU, including Germany, looking to impose various punishments on Serbia, including eliminating them as a candidate for EU membership.

France opposed, but not on the grounds that there isn’t collective racial guilt, let alone on the grounds that the protest in Kosovo is mostly a reaction to harsh crackdowns by the Kosovar regime. Instead, their argument is that they want Tadic’s party to win the next election, and they’re worried that the sanctions will hurt his chances.

The tour over the past five days included trips to the Bushehr power plant, the enrichment sites at Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordo, and the research facility at Arak.

European officials were quick to condemn the access, saying “one-off openness isn’t enough” and that it probably didn’t indicate an actual change in policy by the Iranian government.

Indeed it may not, as Iran has been pretty straightforward at allowing the IAEA access to its nuclear sites, allowing the agency to repeatedly verify the non-diversion of nuclear material to any but civilian purposes.

Details are spotty and there is no confirmation from any official sources, but the move would have the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) receive a “significant” upgrade in its recognition, albeit something still short of independent statehood.

The new rumors come following weekend confirmations that the Palestinians intend to press the matter at the UN Security Council next month, and comments yesterday related to the presumptive US veto of the process.

The Palestinians have significant international support for statehood, but the effort has been loudly opposed by the US as a “provocative” measure. The European Union has largely been supportive of statehood, but seems also to be keen to avoid a major embarrassment centering on a US veto, and the inevitable diplomatic fallout that would produce.