4) Sharply increase the economic pressure on the regime by cutting off its gasoline imports. This can be accomplished through legislation now pending in Congress (and based on FDD research). In particular, the Iran Petroleum Sanctions Act would give the president the authority to impose sanctions on any entity that provides or helps Iran obtain refined petroleum, including suppliers, shippers, insurance and reinsurance companies as well as companies giving financial assistance. The bill is strongly backed by more than 60 Senators, ranging across the political spectrum -- Joe Lieberman, Jon Kyl, Evan Bayh, Russ Feingold, Chuck Schumer and Tom Coburn among them. A House version is co-sponsored by Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican on that panel, and has over 200 co-sponsors.

They all agree on this: American taxpayers should not be supporting the Islamist regime in Tehran - as we have been in previous administrations and still are. They also agree that no responsible nation or corporation should be fueling vehicles that transport the Islamist regime's thugs to homes and hospitals in the middle of the night.

5) Fully fund and build a comprehensive missile defense system so Iran's rulers understand that the nuclear weapons and missiles they are developing are a waste of resources: The United States will have the means to prevent them from reaching their targets.

Such an approach would force the ruling mullahs to confront tough policy choices of their own. If this failed to change the regime's behavior -- or the regime itself -- harsher measures would be considered. But at that point, no one could say that a peaceful alternative had been ignored.

Iran becoming a nuclear-armed, state sponsor of terrorism, openly vowing "Death to America!" while meddling in Lebanon, Gaza, Latin America, Europe and Asia, and threatening genocide against Israelis: Obama can not want such change to take place on his watch.

By contrast, the successful use of "leveraged engagement," coupled with the administration's muscular policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, would constitute nothing less than an Obama Doctrine -- neither Bush redux nor a return to "realism," the hoary theory that all nations act rationally and in pursuit of similar visions of self-interest.

Instead, as former National Security Advisor Robert "Bud" McFarlane recently - and perhaps hopefully - wrote, it would be: "a doctrine of effective realism, a doctrine that advances our own interests and those of democratic aspirants throughout the world."

Is that not the kind of policy-making for which Obama would like to be known? More important: Is this not what's best for the nation?