Wanted: Presidential backbone.

Here’s Bret Stephens:

In other words, Mr. Obama seems to have thought that a considerable part of America’s Iran problem was simply an America problem, to be addressed by various forms of conciliation: Mr. Obama’s New Year’s greetings to “the Islamic Republic of Iran”; the disavowal of regime change as a U.S. objective; the offer of direct talks without preconditions; withdrawal from Iraq; the insistence, following the election, that the U.S. would neither presume to judge the outcome nor otherwise “meddle” in an internal Iranian affair.

What did all this achieve? Iran’s nuclear programs are accelerating. It is testing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. Its support for terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is unabated. Ahmadinejad stole an election in broad daylight. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei blessed the result. British Embassy staff are under siege. A campaign of mass arrests and intimidation is underway and a young woman named Neda Soltan was shot in the heart simply for choosing none of the above.

Oh, and Iran still accuses the U.S. of “meddling.”

Now Mr. Obama is promising more of the same, plus the equivalent of a group hug for the demonstrators. Is this supposed to be “realism”?

A more common sense form of realism would reach different conclusions. One is that the “bloviations” of Ahmadinejad are not just politically motivated, but are also expressions of contempt for Mr. Obama. That contempt springs from a keen nose for weakness, honed by the habits of dictatorship and based on an estimate — so far unrefuted — of Mr. Obama’s mettle.

Second, as long as Tehran can murder its own people, scoff at a U.S. president and flout U.N. resolutions without consequence, it will continue to do so.

Third is that the Achilles Heel of the Iranian regime isn’t its “isolation.” (What kind of isolation is it when Ahmadinejad’s “election” was instantly ratified by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev?) Nor is it its vulnerability to a gasoline embargo, vulnerable though it is. Its real weakness is its own domestic unpopularity, which has at last found expression in a massive opposition movement.

The fourth is that Iran’s nuclear programs have now reached the stage where they can only be stopped through military strikes — probably Israeli — or an internal political decision to abandon them. The prospect of another Mideast war can’t exactly please the administration. So how about trying to achieve the same result by leveraging point No. 3?

Maybe ordinary Iranians welcome Mr. Obama’s solicitude. What they need is Mr. Obama’s spine. If that means “democracy promotion” and tough talk about “regime change,” well, it wouldn’t be the first time this president has made his predecessor’s policy his own.