Iran and the Cold War

For a long time I've wondered if the Cold War experience with detente (states with competing political systems managing to do mutually beneficial deals in some limited areas) could help us think about the Western relationship with Iran. For example, would it be possible to live with a nuclear theocratic Iran (it's not as if the alternatives are so appealing, after all)? Today, Roger Cohen, writing from Teheran, suggests Cold War history may also help us think about Iran's domestic development. The system isn't working, pressure for reform is rising now that oil prices are down--the question is, will it be Deng Xiao Ping or Gorbachev style? Will the current regime manage to open things up a little while surviving in power, or will there be a reform process that leads to the collapse of the Islamic state? Cohen suggests the U.S. has a vital role to play as Iran decides what to do during its upcoming presidential election: if Washington acts in a threatening way, chances for meaningful reform (and presumably a less aggressive Iranian foreign policy) go down, and vice versa. Cohen is over there, talking to Iranians, so obviously he's looking in the right places for answers to these questions. But I have to think of yet another Cold War experience, one we should guard against, namely believing that the way countries around the world behave depends to a large extent on what the U.S. does.