President Biden’s long-overdue address to the nation last night makes a strong and necessary case for backing Ukraine and Israel. Those are two democracies whose enemies, President Putin and Hamas, want to, as Mr. Biden put it, “completely annihilate them.” It marks a fine speech as far as it goes, but at its weakest point it failed to go far enough: Russia’s partner and Hamas’s top benefactor, Iran, was relegated to a throwaway line. 

“The risk of conflict and chaos could spread in other parts of the world: in the Indo-Pacific, in the Middle East, especially in the Middle East,” Mr. Biden said. “Iran is supporting Russia in Ukraine, and it’s supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups in the region.” That’s about the long and short of his answer, except that Mr. Biden assured the world that in respect of Iran: “We’ll continue to hold them accountable, I might add.”

Continue? Who’s he kidding. His policy toward Iran has been a study in appeasement. As Mr. Biden made his speech, American troops stationed at Baghdad airport and other Iraqi bases were attacked by militias armed with Iranian drones and surface-to-surface missiles. Separately, United States Ship Carney intercepted a ballistic missile launched toward Israel by the Yemen’s Houthis, who are armed, financed, and indoctrinated by Iran.

For two weeks, endless rocket barrages from Gaza and Lebanon have forced Israelis to seek shelter several times a day and flee border towns. Beyond the Mideast, as Mr. Biden said, Mr. Putin buys drones and missiles from Iran “to terrorize Ukrainian cities and people.” For months, our diplomats at the United Nations have berated Moscow and Tehran for defying the Security Council by violating a ban on Iranian exports of such arms.

Yet, mere hours before the president vowed to hold Iran “accountable,” the UN missile and drone embargo expired Thursday — with Mr. Biden’s full acquiescence. In 2015, when America led six world powers to strike a nuclear deal with the mullahs, President Obama knew full well he could not pass his Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action as a treaty; there was no chance in Hades that the Senate would ratify it.

Instead, the president turned to the United Nations Security Council to put what passes for a legal stamp on the deal. He was fully aware that not only the Senate but the House lacked support for the deal. Yet he went directly against Congress, asking the Security Council to pass its Resolution 2231. The resolution included “sunsets” — a gradual easing of sanctions culminating in 2030, when Iran will be free of all UN-imposed restrictions  

One such sunset foresaw an end, eight years after passing the resolution, to a ban on “import and export of missile-related technology, including missiles and drones.” That is the expiry date that came due last night. Washington and some European allies now vow to keep sanctioning missile exports. Yet, the removal of a global ban from the Security Council’s agenda will make it much easier for Iran to proliferate its death instruments around the world.    

The Council’s Resolution 2231 had yet another provision that helped sell it to the American public. Each of the parties to the deal was permitted to “snapback,” or unilaterally void the resolution and reimpose all pre-JCPOA global sanctions, including the missile export ban. Mr. Biden’s frantic attempts to revive the deal that Amrica left in 2018 were skillfully rebuffed by the mullahs.

Yet, America and allies ignored Iran’s accelerated rush to a bomb, and steadfastly refused to implement the snapback mechanism. Meanwhile Mr. Biden gradually eased enforcement of unilateral American sanctions on Iranian oil exports. Now back in full swing, oil sales have already added billions of dollars to the previously-dwindled Tehran coffers. As other unilateral sanctions are eased, the Iran proxies — the “resistance alliance” — are thriving.   

As a former Israeli premier, Naftali Bennett, puts it, the terrorists are the arms of an octopus whose head is at Tehran. The Islamic Republic is a member of an axis of powers that are united behind a desire to end America’s world leadership and destroy Israel. Following October 7, Mr. Biden now seems to grasp that Iran must be stopped. To say, though, that he’d “continue,” rather than reverse, his policies can only be a falsehood or a slip of the tongue.