An assistant shows the block with a red button marked "reset" in English and "overload" in Russian that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a meeting on March 6, 2009 in Geneva.

Given Iran’s well established pattern of behavior (and Russia’s, and China’s) we were highly skeptical about President Barack Obama’s “Reset Button” approach to U.S. diplomacy.

And now it seems that the failure of Obama administration’s Iranian engagement strategy is about to shift the focus of U.S. diplomacy from “reset” to “panic.” Reuters reports:

The United States wants the U.N. Security Council to approve a resolution within weeks, not months, laying the ground for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke to leaders in Turkey, Italy and France about the “urgent need” to move forward on sanctions as soon as possible, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.