Can "Soft Europe" fight for anything besides a welfare check?

In today's WSJ Leon de Winter asks whether Europe will "fight for anything, besides a welfare check?"

After two years of disastrous dialogue, and more of the same in recent days, we can conclude that no diplomatic initiative can stop Iran from getting the bomb.

The International Atomic Energy Agency meets again this week to discuss the mullahs' nuclear ambitions, while Russia floats a plan to get Iran to enrich uranium on its soil. But before we got to this point, we had the Europeans in the starring role. The foreign ministers of the leading European Union countries--Britain, France and Germany--did try for years to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, most recently at Friday's meeting in Vienna that ended up in yet another failure.

But Iran knew all along that this threesome, formally the "Troika," had no real negotiating authority and would never resort to serious measures.

And yet Britain's Jack Straw, France's Philippe Douste-Blazy (and his predecessor, Dominique de Villepin) and Germany's Joschka Fischer (and his successor, Frank-Walter Steinmeier) talked on, clinging to a postmodern European belief in a world where any conflict can be resolved with enough reason and mutual understanding.

The Troika offered the mullahs economic carrots and alternative sources of nuclear power--as if energy had anything to do with it--while Iran did what any football team does when it's ahead: It played for time.

This it used very well to push ahead with its clandestine nuclear program.

Did the Troika know that Iran knew that Europe was weak? Of course. Europe's posturing was empty from the start.
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The mullahs also knew that the Troika couldn't back up its threat of an economic boycott with the threat of military action.

There more excellent reporting before de Winter ends:

So for years the Troika continued talking, maintaining the illusion that Tehran was playing by the rules as equal partners and denying the reality that the Mullahs will gain great economic and military leverage over Europe in the very near future.

Europe could have suppressed the Iranian threat if it had convinced the mullahs two years ago that it was willing to contemplate military options. Only Europe lacks core values that it holds sacrosanct and that it's willing to defend at the highest cost.
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Thanks to European illusions about soft power, the free world has two options left on Iran: disaster or catastrophe. America and Israel will bleed for Europe's lack of conviction.

I hope you read the whole thing. I'll be posting more on it tonight, including what European friends are telling me about what they think will happen next with Iran.