Baaaaak, bk-bk-bk...

How’s that “soft power” thing working for ya?

Iran has warned European Union states of "dire consequences" because of their decision to impose tighter sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program.

"Undoubtedly, such a confrontational approach may leave dire consequences in the relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the European Union," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in a letter to EU foreign ministers obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

The EU's decision "will definitely cause far greater losses for the European Union itself rather than for the Islamic Republic of Iran as this is amply demonstrated in all previous statistics," said the letter,

Actually, it’s more like E.D. than Soft Power©™®, but who’s counting?

The EU’s response? Sanctions, until the Iranians agree to come back to the take and jerk them around for another 5 years, when even then it seemed a little too far-gone and pedantic:

EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton welcomed Iran's offer of a return to negotiations but said she wanted to see the details before commenting further.

Turkey and Brazil agreed a nuclear fuel swap deal with Tehran days before the U.N. agreed more sanctions in mid-June, but this did not stop the major powers -- the United States, Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia -- from pushing ahead with a stringent, fourth round of restrictions on Iran.

The European Union said on Monday that the aim of its latest sanctions was to get Iran to return to negotiations over its uranium enrichment programme, possibly by the end of the year.

That’ll fix their wagon once and for all! At least until some European government decides that they have to peddle more of their rubbish to Iran, and the whole thing will end there.

"Fate leads the willing and drags along the unwilling."

- from Lucius Annaeus Seneca’s letters, Epistulae ad Lucilium