How is President Biden going to answer his great grandchildren when he is dandling them on his knee and they ask, “What did you do, Great Grandpa, during the Iranian revolution?” Led by courageous women, the Iranian people are attempting to topple the Islamist regime and tap into a history of liberalism and tolerance that’s been a part of Persia going back to the time of Esther. President Biden has been tongue-tied and out of the fight.

It’s hard to think of a performance quite as shocking as that which has unfolded under Mr. Biden. After three months of open revolt, nearly 17,000 people have been incarcerated; on Tuesday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights — the UN, for crying out loud — said that the situation in Iran was “critical” and described a hardening of the authorities’ response to protests that have resulted in more than 400 deaths.

The nationwide protest movement first focused on Iran’s state-mandated hijab for women. What set it off was the killing of a young Kurdish-Iranian, Mahsa Amini, in custody for improperly wearing a mandatory head scarf. Now, as our Benny Avni has reported, Kurdish areas in Iran are being attacked mercilessly. Fresh protests are erupting daily. The sentiment of the people of Iran is clear — the clerics must go. 

This has become evident almost everywhere. The stunning Iranian loss to England at the World Cup in Qatar has given the revolt a global audience. A hard-line Iranian daily, Vatanemrooz, reported that protesters in Iran actually celebrated their country’s humiliating defeat. In the streets, Iranians burst into cheers when England scored. Protesters honked horns after the game. Motorbike riders in Tehran are shouting “Six.”

That’s a reference to England’s six goals against Iran. People rooting in the streets for Britain is but one not so tiny sign that this is an incipient revolution. Yet last month, when Washington sanctioned key Iranian officials, Secretary Blinken said “The United States is committed to supporting the Iranian people and ensuring that those responsible for the brutal crackdown on the ongoing nationwide protests in Iran are held accountable.” 

This is no longer, if it ever was, about holding those behind the crackdown “responsible.” It is about overthrowing the tyranny. This month one world leader — President Macron of France — finally met the Iranian-American dissident Masih Alinejad and a delegation of women opposed to the mullahs. The French president referred to the events in Iran as a revolution and said he supported it. 

Where are Messers. Biden and Blinken? Even French Vogue has emerged for the freedom-craving women of Iran. No less a figure than America’s former national security adviser, Ambassador John Bolton, tells our C.M. Vik that “the only answer to Iran is regime change.” Mr. Bolton adds that “it’s not a question of trying to do more to change their behavior. This is an ideological struggle, and they’re not going to change.”

This point was illuminated seven years ago in these pages by Ali Wambold. His family ruled the country as Shahs of the Qajar Dynasty between 1785 and 1925, and again under a democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, between 1951 and 1953. In a devastating critique of American appeasement, he focuses on the fact that the current regime is bound — by its own constitution — to jihad against the West.

One would think that Mr. Biden would get the point of President Obama’s recent remarks confessing, finally, his own failure to back the Iranian rebellion in 2009. “That was a mistake,” he said. The London Financial Times, in a report Tuesday, is suggesting that what is happening today is less impressive than the general strikes that, in 1979, brought down the Shah and that most Iranians are more interested in jobs than freedom.

All the more reason to wonder why Mr. Biden stands silent. This is no time for nuclear appeasement, particularly when the regime itself is so anti-American. The moment calls for America to side unambiguously with the Iranian revolution and declare as an American goal ending its Islamist republic. If Mr. Biden fails, it’s hard to see how his legacy will recover. What will his great grandchildren say?