Last month the United States proposed a resolution that called for the expulsion of Iran from the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. A vote was taken Wednesday and the resolution passed.

The reasons given in the resolution were the “systematic oppression” of women and violent crackdown on street protests. The members of the U.N. Economic and Social Council voted – 29 members voted in favor of the resolution, eight members voted against it, and 16 abstained. Iran is immediately ousted from the commission for the rest of the 2022-26 term.

I know what you are thinking because I’m thinking it, too. So what? What does this really do? Well, not much. Most of us think the United Nations is a bloated, antiquated, corrupt international body that does a lot of virtue-signaling and little else. Joe Biden attends General Assembly meetings and the camera catches him asleep in his seat. The resolution does humiliate Iran among the member countries and sends a message of support for the protesters. It’s an important statement, if nothing else.

The death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman in an Iranian jail after being beaten and arrested for protesting the country’s hijab law. The morality police arrested her for not properly wearing a headscarf in public. Women rose up and began to lead protests in the streets, a rare thing that has freaked out the mullahs and Ayatollah Khomeini. The protesters are not intimidated by the brutal response of the Basij forces as they try to break up the demonstrations. Men have joined in the protests, too, and some are beginning to be executed. So far there have been two public executions in the last two weeks.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, spoke. She said Iran’s membership put an “ugly stain” on the commission’s credibility.

“The commission is the premier U.N. body for promoting gender equality and empowering women,” she said. “It cannot do its important work if it’s being undermined from within.”

“We can act in this moment to support women. We can act in direct response to our constituents, the global community of women,” she said, adding that Iran’s government wanted to “wiggle” out of the vote, “to use misinformation and procedural tricks to obscure the truth and avoid kind of accountability.”

So, finally, a month after the resolution was introduced, it was brought up for a vote. “Serious concern” was expressed over the regime’s actions against the demonstrations, hardly stern language. It did note the regime’s bad actions “to continuously undermine and increasingly suppress the human rights of women and girls, including the right to freedom of expression and opinion, often with the use of excessive force,” in contradiction of the commission’s mandate, “as well as through the use of lethal force resulting in the deaths of peaceful protestors, including women and girls.” That still isn’t exactly taking the regime to the woodshed but it’s better than nothing, I guess.

Iran blames the United States for the resolution – yes, as a matter of fact we did introduce that, thank you very much – and Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s U.N. ambassador, said the U.S. was making an “illegal” request and bullying. Boo hoo.

“It is not at all unexpected that the United States is taking such unlawful action against Iran given its longstanding hostility towards the Iranian people, but if carried out, it would be exceedingly dangerous to the U.N. system integrity,” he said.

Iran’s state-run Nour News media outlet, which is associated with the Iranian National Security Council, swiftly rebuked the country’s expulsion on Twitter, calling the move “a clear violation of the philosophy of the #UN and its charter, and worse, the Secretary General of the UN, as the guardian of the credibility of this institution, has remained silent.”

Of course, that’s nonsense. The United States is not hostile to Iranians, just to the theocracy in charge and to Ayatollah Khomeini. I do wish Biden would officially make some kind of statement of support for the protesters instead of delegating it to the U.S. ambassador, but that’s how he rolls. He’s Status Quo Joe and the silence is deafening.