Via HotAir, Tom Friedman has a bold plan to end the theocratic state in Iran: put a $1 tax on U.S. gasoline! Sure, it will be a terrible burden on everyday Americans during the worst economic conditions in a generation, but surely the mullahs will embrace democratic reforms if they have slightly less money! Only exclamation marks can capture the enthusiastic absurdity of this international politics version of the broken windows fallacy!

Friedman cites the collapse of the Soviet Union, but this is a very poor analogy for several reasons. First off, in Communist states where the leadership had the will to crack down (e.g. Cuba and N Korea) there was no change in power despite loss of Soviet funding. Second, a major reason the USSR collapsed was that nearly all its constituent nations had been militarily coerced into the Union and retained their own nationalist/ethnic pride: Ukrainians voted 10:1 for independence when given the chance (and you can't really blame them). Iran isn't homogenous, but it's not very likely to break up along ethnic lines either. Third, oil was only a minor factor in the overall economic devastation wrought by Communist ideology itself. The notion falling oil prices, and their effect on grain purchases, were the decisive factor ignores the fact they had to buy grain in the first place, due to 70 years of steadily worsening harvests. Iran's regime is dysfunctional, brutal, and increasingly illegitimate, but not Communist.

And even were the Persian petro-economy to utterly collapse, which may happen anyway, it's not clear why anyone should expect that would lead to political change, given that the mullahs seem quite unwavering in their belief in their own holiness, and also quite willing to murder anyone who expresses a opinion otherwise. The most likely outcome has the mullahs cracking down even harder, and the country gradually starting to look more and more like Afghanistan under the Taliban (except with nukes; that should be fun!)

Ultimately only two things reform militarized regimes like Iran's: moderation/capitulation from within, or military force from without. Don't bet on either happening anytime soon.