We're not expecting a rehash of December 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist after years of internal combustion.
But 31 years to the month later, events in Iran bring to mind the fuzzy final days of the USSR. The theocracy ruling the land in ancient Persia isn't going anywhere. (Not likely, anyway.) But 2022 has proven to be a powerful agent of change there, nonetheless.
The Iranian cleric and attorney general Mohammad Jafar Montazeri announced on state-run TV that the country's notorious morality police, known as the gasht-e-ershad, had been "abolished." He added that the government was considering repealing the compulsory hijab rules for women. Soon thereafter, state media disputed his remarks.
Also appearing on state TV, a cleric named Reza Gholami commented on the protests that have swept the country since the death in September of an Iranian woman taken into custody by the morality police.
His comments weren't exactly expected. An excerpt, courtesy of Iranian American author and professor Sohrab Ahmari:
"In years past, we committed mistakes in governance, and these mistakes have increased of late. One reason has to do with the growing complexity and delicacy of the governing arena. Governance in today's global conditions has nothing to do with governance 30, 40 years ago. . . In today's atmosphere, we have to accept that the security forces have done wrong.
"For starters, the security forces shouldn't have been in the business of enforcing hijab in the first place, and this person [Mahsa Amini, the woman whose death at the hands of the morality police sparked weeks of protests] wasn't even wearing bad hijab to such a degree that it required her detention ...
"And in recent months, as a result of a long process, we confront a vast social polarization, a polarization that is now accelerating, and elements within the Islamic leadership and system caused this polarization to widen."
Mr. Ahmari calls these words "stunning." As he should. Because they are. A representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini publicly conceded that 55 percent of the population (roughly 44 million) approved of the anti-hijab protests, according to the regime's own internal surveys.
Whatever's going on in Tehran, its leadership doesn't seem to be in agreement about how to proceed. Hundreds of protestors including children already have been tortured and/or killed as security forces cracked down on protestors. Will crackdowns continue? Can state-sponsored murder be justified one day but not OK when it fails to deliver a desired result?
Writing for The American Conservative, Professor Ahmari warns that the clerics' surprising admissions, though delivered on state TV, don't necessarily amount to state endorsement, nor do they foretell regime change. The Middle East has taught him to be wary of such expectations, after all.
Besides, Mr. Ahmari says there remains a strong core of regime supporters--he places the number at 20 million--who "have given life and limb for the Islamic order founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini and who happen to control the most powerful and prestigious elements of the security forces."
And Iran is a multinational state split along ethnic and sectarian fault lines, he adds--no one should welcome its violent dissolution. Such a scenario would result in civil war "that would make Syria's look like child's play."
His best-case scenario for Iran involves a managed transition run by officials inside the country's security forces who realize "Khomeini's brand of Islamism has run its course."
News reports earlier this year out of Afghanistan told similar stories of a divided Taliban; its leadership reportedly at odds over things like allowing young girls to go to school past the sixth grade. Americans should be all too familiar with the hazards of hoping for Real Change in that part of the world. It's a rough neighborhood.
Mr. Ahmari believes an Iran governed along more nationalist lines, rather than ideological ones, can deliver the normalcy for which Iranians are protesting and dying.
Since Khomeini's revolutionists took over in 1979, Iran has experienced swells of protests and civil unrest as its people chafed against the theocracy's strict oppression. All such movements were violently put down. But this year has delivered something different.
However it emerges, whether this wave has crested or rises perhaps to tsunami, Iran won't be the same.
Now, whether it will be better is still a question.