Was reading more articles on this (example), and noticed an increasing amount of fingerpointing at the U.S. for our "increasingly militant stance" on this.

Then I finally got the U.N.'s plan:

Talk, hold conferences, threaten to hold more conferences, write papers, talk some more. At some point the threat will get to a level where it still isn't obvious to the layman (no mushroom clouds), but is horribly obvious to those close to the field (remember, we aren't exactly talking "aluminum tubes" in Iran.)

Then, either Israel or the U.S. does something of a military nature.

Suddenly, the U.N. and all the "enlightened" nations universally condemn the action (see also: Israel and Iraq), claiming that we spoiled an imminent negotiating success with our awful cowboy techniques again. Remember Iraq, where Hans Blix probably had Saddam just short of abdicating his dictatorship and retiring to France? And then the U.S. came in and spoiled it all.

Of course, everyone will buy this. And there's probably nothing to be done about it. The alternative is to wait until the threat becomes horribly obvious to the layman, and I don't think any amount of self-justification is worth those consequences.