WALL STREET JOURNAL
Iran’s Mullahs Throw Biden a Lifeline
Walter Russell Mead
November 7, 2022

Joe Biden is a lucky man. The hero­ism of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple saved him from a Russ­ian vic­tory. Now the peo­ple of Iran, led by their women, are of­fer­ing him a his­toric op­por­tu­nity to weaken Rus­sia, re­duce long-term Amer­i­can vul­ner­a­bil­i-ties in the Mid­dle East, and even re­turn a sense of cau­tion and so­bri­ety to Chi­nese for­eign pol­icy. Like many great op­por­tu­ni­ties, it comes un­ex­pect­edly. The Mid­dle East has been a dreary place for Team Biden. The fail­ure to en­list the Ira­ni­ans in a re­newed nu­clear deal, the sham­bolic Afghan with­drawal, the em­bar­rass­ing fist bump with a price-hik­ing Mo-hammed bin Salman, Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu’s elec­toral vic­tory: Noth­ing in the Mid­dle East has gone Joe Biden’s way. READ MORE