U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif on April 19, 2016, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, N.Y., before a bilateral meeting at the outset of a trip also taking him to Cairo, Egypt, for a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to accompany President Obama during a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
(Biden) went on to offer a potted history of the Middle East B.T.—before Trump—when Iran was peaceable, its nuclear ambitions vanquished, and “there was a united front of allies and partners to address Iran’s other destabilizing actions throughout the world.”
Iran must have missed that united containment front because the country accelerated its spread of revolution in the wake of the 2015 nuclear deal. Flush with new cash and the promise of investment, Iran expanded its arsenal of ballistic missiles. Soleimani armed the Houthis in Yemen, spread missiles to Hezbollah to bomb Israel, mobilized Shiite militias, and made himself Iran’s viceroy in Iraq and Bashar Assad his vassal in Syria.
The nuclear deal empowered Soleimani. But Mr. Biden had nothing to say about all that.
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