I'm not an expert on Russia of that time, but I would say that at the moment what we have in Iran is a small group, including the president, who sincerely believe that the tide of history is with them, and then there's a much larger group of people who think they're a mid-sized country with some very big problems coming up.
Every indication from the election campaign is that ordinary Iranians are already quite unhappy about the economic situation, and if we add to this dramatic cutbacks in government spending and much higher taxation, there are going to be some very unhappy people in Iran. I suspect that even more the politicians would be focusing on the domestic concerns and saying that foreign policy has to take a back seat compared to that.
That's very much the position of one of the candidates in the presidential election, a former speaker of parliament. He doesn't really care that much about foreign policy. While he may not have good foreign policy views, his concern is domestic policy, and that gives us something to work with.