A Joe Biden Mailer Targeting Iowa Voters Uses Sinister Image Of Iran
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is using stark imagery in an Iowa mailer that appears to pitch him as a bulwark against the Iranian government, including Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, with whom former President Barack Obama negotiated the Iran nuclear agreement.
HuffPost obtained a four-page piece of campaign literature that the Biden campaign sent to voters in Des Moines.
The mailer’s front features a dark, red-hued drawing of an Iranian tank in the foreground. A soldier standing atop the tank is saluting a row of Iranian military officials led by President Rouhani. A framed photo of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is in the background alongside them.
“We live in the most dangerous moment in a generation,” the mailer says in bold white font at the bottom. “Who is ready to lead us?”
The back of the pamphlet repeats the same lines, but overlays them on a black-and-white photo of the Oval Office.
Inside, the pamphlet contains information and images promoting Biden’s foreign policy experience ― fairly typical campaign material. A headline in large, navy-blue letters across the top of the two-page spread says, “Joe Biden: Strong, Steady Leadership.” A photo on the third page shows Biden speaking at a lectern with U.S. military service-members and an American flag arrayed behind him.
Still, the message on the mailer’s front evokes an unusual degree of foreign-policy alarmism for a Democratic presidential candidate, particularly concerning Iran.
It suggests that Iran ― rather than, say, the so-called Islamic State, Russia, or China ― represents the greatest threat to the U.S. And it frames the relationship between the two countries as fundamentally belligerent.
The campaign’s inclusion of Rouhani ― a political moderate in the Iranian context, especially given his role in the historic U.S.-Iran nuclear deal in 2015 ― is especially puzzling. Biden is fond of touting the role he played in...
