Condoleezza Rice took American policy toward Iran a big step in the right direction yesterday when she went to Congress and asked for $75 million – atop $10 million already authorized by Congress – to support freedom and democracy in Iran.

This is a better policy than simply bombing Iran’s nuclear sites because it is likely to win friends for America among the Iranian people as opposed to triggering an anti-American backlash. And it is a better policy than bombing because it does not risk the chance that after the bombing, Iran will retaliate by activating Hezbollah or Hamas sleeper cells to launch a stepped-up campaign of terrorist attacks against American and Israeli targets. Don’t get us wrong; we’re not calling for taking the military option off the table. But ideally a free and democratic government in Iran would either abandon pursuit of a nuclear weapon or possess one in the sort of non-threatening, allied way that Britain does does.

Pursuing the liberation of Iran is also a better policy than the endless diplomacy led by France and Germany and centered on the hope that a U.N. Security Council that includes Russia and Communist China will take a hard line against Iran. This diplomacy only gives Iran’s ruling terrorist theocrats more time to work on the bomb, and it only elevates their stature with the Iranian people, who wisely doubt that America is serious about regime change in Tehran when its NATO allies are busy negotiating with the bad guys.

A fact sheet released yesterday by the State Department spoke of $50 million for stepped-up American television and radio broadcasting in Farsi and $15 million for groups like the National Endowment for Democracy to help organize Iranian labor unions and political organizations. The Treasury Department will ease certain restrictions that had made it hard for Americans to help dissidents in Iran without violating American sanctions.

One may quibble that this American money is too little – less than Iran spends, say, on Hamas. Or that it should have come years ago, and with a more forthright policy statement about regime change. But it’s clear Ms. Rice is headed in the right direction. The liberation of Iraq was a powerful example. So too the liberation of Iran would be a demonstration to the world that a regime that supports terrorism, tramples freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, denies the Holocaust, calls for the obliteration of Israel, and pursues a nuclear bomb will be put out of business.