The U.N. Security Council yesterday imposed a third round of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. In an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal by Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. urges Iran's leaders to follow the lead of other nations (e.g. South Africa, Libya, Brazil) who have abandoned similar nuclear programs, citing their past decisions as peaceful steps toward becoming fully integrated in the "international community."

Meanwhile, Latin America is scrambling to defuse a three-nation crisis that threatens the region's stability after Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia and ordered troops to their neighbor's border.

On Sunday, Ecuador and Venezuela decided to move thousands of troops to Colombia's borders, one day after Colombian forces killed a leftist rebel leader in Ecuador. Bogotá has since accused high officials in Ecuador of meeting regularly with the slain rebel, Raul Reyes, to harbor the guerrillas' presence there.

The developments have raised tensions in a region that has been on edge in the several months since Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez had a bitter falling-out. Reyes was the second-ranking commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a rebel group believed to be supported by Chavez.

"This is not a bilateral problem, it's a regional problem," Ecuador's President Rafael Correa told Mexican television yesterday. "Should this set a precedent, Latin America will become another Middle East."

Chavez appears to agree, declaring on national television that "the Colombian government has turned into the Israel of Latin America...a terrorist state that is subject to the great terrorist, the government of the United States and their apparatus."

An editorial in Newsweek today questions whether these events could trigger a war in Latin America.