If Iran continues to refuse to verifiably disarm, we want to make sure that other leaders of mid-sized powers still feel that a price is being paid that’s high enough to induce them to make other choices. ~Matt Yglesias

Greg Scoblete thinks this is a worthwhile accomplishment in its own right. There are so few states with nuclear programs that need such dissuading that I doubt this matters very much. Even if we all agreed on this point, all of this hinges on Iran actually paying a high price. Aside from Obama loyalists and administration members, no one thinks that this round of sanctions does anything of the kind. Engagement advocates find the pursuit of a new round of sanctions misguided, but recognize weak sanctions when they see them. As the Leveretts correctly observe, this round of sanctions is very weak and had to be very weak to gain Russian and Chinese support. On the other side of the debate, Jackson Diehl points out all the reasons why these sanctions are not very significant. Many governments will not adopt the stricter financial sanctions and ship inspections that the resolution allows but does not require. The Leveretts explain what that means:

The Obama Administration has indicated that it anticipates these provisions will provide a legal basis for other states—like members of the European Union and Japan—to enact tougher national sanctions of their own. But the United States is not going to get anything approaching universal compliance with these “optional” sanctions. The net effect will be to accelerate the reallocation of business opportunities in the Islamic Republic from Western states to China and other non-Western powers.

What the new resolution has managed to do is force Turkey and Brazil to show sympathy with Iran at the Security Council. Critics complained that the Tehran nuclear deal would not prevent Iranian enrichment, but the new sanctions will not prevent Iranian enrichment, either. Turkey and Brazil offered the U.S. the beginning of an alternative to going down the sanctions dead end, and the administration rejected it out of hand. Far from showing Iran’s isolation, the resolution shows how unimportant Iran’s nuclear program is to most major powers. Russia and China were willing to go along with some superficial penalties, but did not want to do anything really disruptive. Now that the resolution has passed, there will be even less patience for continued U.S. fixation on this issue.

P.S. I neglected to comment on the more ridiculous part of Yglesias’ statement. Obviously, Iran cannot “verifiably disarm” when it doesn’t possess and is nowhere close to possessing nuclear weapons.