The more we go through Vice President Biden’s remarks on foreign policy during his debate with Congressman Ryan, the more it looks to us like Prime Minister Netanyahu knows just what he is doing when he warns of the need for the Obama administration to set red-lines on Iran. This came into focus for us when we were watching one of the podcasts by the Wall Street Journal’s foreign affairs columnist, Bret Stephens, and then read the Journal’s devastating editorial this evening, “Biden’s Intelligence.”

What the Journal’s editorial did was parse the vice president’s remarks in the debate to illuminate what turns out to be some news — namely, a retreat by the administration, if Mr. Biden is speaking for it, in respect of Iran’s maneuvering toward an atomic bomb. After years in which the administration and the rest of the free world has been measuring the menace by the enrichment of uranium, the most difficult step in bomb-making, suddenly Mr. Biden wants us to “calm down” because they don’t have a bomb to put their fissile material in.

So now Mr. Biden wants to talk not about the enrichment but about the case into which to put fissile material. This switcheroo is a retreat, even an appeasement. It starts to look like every time Iran approaches one danger point, the administration is going to come up with some new stall. It was good newspaper work of the Journal to point it out. No wonder Prime Minister Netanyahu is beating the drums for a redline. He did this most pointedly in his speech the other day at the General Assembly:

“Red lines could be drawn in different parts of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But to be credible, a red line must be drawn first and foremost in one vital part of their program: on Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium. Now let me explain why: Basically, any bomb consists of explosive material and a mechanism to ignite it. The simplest example is gunpowder and a fuse. That is, you light the fuse and set off the gunpowder. In the case of Iran’s plans to build a nuclear weapon, the gunpowder is enriched uranium. The fuse is a nuclear detonator. For Iran, amassing enough enriched uranium is far more difficult than producing the nuclear fuse.”

No one wants war with Iran. But if there’s one thing the past century has taught us, it is that appeasement is no way to avoid war. Mr. Biden should know better — and “no” better. What Messrs. Netanyahu and Ryan and the editors of the Wall Street Journal understand is that there will always be the temptation search for one more possible reason not to act. And they can see the emerging pattern in the Obama administration. There are a few serious people who believe President Obama will act when the time comes. But there are fewer believers every time someone like Mr. Biden opens his mouth. Congratulations to Congressman Ryan forcing the issue into the open at the debate.