OP-ED: Sleepless in Tehran, By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, New York Times, October 28, 2008

Reasonable description from Friedman on Iran's increased vulnerability, but I am wary of the uni-causal explanation for the Soviet Union's fall (oil up and then down), because it takes a complex thing and turns it into an all-encompassing, single-point failure answer. So I am equally wary of thinking that lower oil prices afford us that much leverage with Iran. High oil prices alone don't explain all of Soviet behavior in the 1970s and lower prices don't explain all of it in the 1980s. It is simply a simplistic 20/20 hindsight that's been layered on in recent years, in part to give Reagan undue credit for the USSR's demise. But that's like saying that if you're there to help to pull the plug on the comatose patient, you're the real reason why he stopped being a virile, strong man, and that's--again--awfully simplistic.

We're not powerless with Iran when oil prices are high, nor do we hold some magic key when they're low. It's just more complex than that.

Iran is a real country with real interests in the region. It's also full of a young population hungry for connectivity with the world. You can't control both of those elements simply by turning the big knob called oil prices.