The Obama team keeps telling us that its foreign-policy gurus have successfully “isolated” Iran and are proceeding with serious sanctions. Neither is true. The Washington Post reports:

A year ago, Iran was on its way to becoming a pariah state. Dozens of governments accused Iranian leaders of stealing the presidential election and condemned the brutal crackdown on protesters that followed. The country faced sanctions and international scorn over its controversial nuclear program.

Now, even as the U.N. Security Council prepares to impose its fourth round of sanctions on Iran with a vote slated for Wednesday, Tehran is demonstrating remarkable resilience, insulating some of its most crucial industries from U.S.-backed financial restrictions and building a formidable diplomatic network that should help it withstand some of the pressure from the West. Iranian leaders are meeting politicians in world capitals from Tokyo to Brussels. They are also signing game-changing energy deals, increasing their economic self-sufficiency and even gaining seats on international bodies.

As for those sanctions, the Post reveals just how ineffective they are:

But in another sign of the fragile nature of Washington’s anti-Iran alliance, the leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran convened a regional security summit Tuesday to emphasize the realignment of military power in the region. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who backs U.N. sanctions, said the measures should not “be excessive” or impose undue hardship on the Iranian leadership or the Iranian people.

The new U.S.-backed measures have been watered down enough that Tehran’s crucial oil sector will probably be spared, and Russia’s and China’s business dealings with Iran will go largely untouched.

Meanwhile, members of Congress shuffle their collective feet, Jewish groups remain mum, and the Obama administration congratulates itself on its “success.” Gal Luft, executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, says the administration’s moves won’t hobble Iran’s nuclear ambitions. (“The horse is out of the stable.”) At every turn — engagement, “reset” with Russia, quietude on the June 12 uprising, downplaying the Qom revelation, fashioning anemic sanctions, and abusing our ally Israel — the Obama team has made fundamental errors. This leaves two options: Israeli military action or a nuclear-armed Iran. The former is undesirable, but the latter is catastrophic. That we face this dilemma is solely the result of Obama’s grievous errors. History will not be kind.