Iran is the new Eastern Europe during the last phase of the Cold War. Like Poland during the heady days of Solidarity in the early 1980s, the protestors in the streets of Iranian cities are not crazed ethnics demonstrating on behalf of some illiberal blood-and-soil nationalism, but enlightened, technologically savvy multitudes crying out for universal values of democracy and human rights. As such, they have captured the imagination of liberal intellectuals in the West. Even as the United States is tied down with 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran promises to be the signal issue of our time.

Just as the enemy of the Polish workers was a calcified secular religion – Communism—the enemy of the Iranian democrats is a clerical autocracy in its gerontocratic, Brezhnevite phase of existence. Beyond all its religious pretensions, it is protected only by goons in the security services. Solidarity was the spark that contributed to the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, which changed the map of Europe. A new regime in Iran would do no less for the Middle East. It would have a positive, pivotal influence on both the political and the security situation in Iraq—pushing Syria towards authentic moderation, and helping undermine Hezbollah and ease the path toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord. More broadly, it would unleash democratic tendencies throughout the Middle East, from North Africa to the Indus, forcing regimes and populations to focus more on their internal problems, thereby undermining radicalism.

An Iran that is both democratic and Shiite would tip the balance against the Sunni Wahabi extremism emanating from Saudi Arabia. And, in a globally networked world, where news of such regime change could not easily be suppressed, leaders in similarly autocratic countries like Venezuela and China would have cause for concern. Clearly Iran, bordering both the oil-rich Persian Gulf and the oil-rich Caspian Sea, is now more than just the geographical pivot of the Greater Middle East; it constitutes the central drama in Eurasia.

It seems possible that, whatever the fate of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be destined be the last Supreme Leader of Iran. The rest is harder to predict. The proletarian uprising against the Russian czar in 1905 did not lead to regime change for twelve years. There was a decade-long hiatus between the rise of Solidarity and a non-communist government in Poland. Despite the inspirational effect of the Saffron Revolution in Burma in 2007, that country is still stuck with its benighted military junta. So while we in the West hope that 2010 turns out to be the year of the Iranian Counter-Revolution, the truth is that we don’t really know: these revolutionary inflection points are dependent on a host of intangibles that puts intelligence agencies far behind the curve.

We are not in control. But something wonderful has begun: nothing less than the most positive development in the Middle East since President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem. And while that daring gesture led only to a cold bilateral peace between Egypt and Israel, the Green Revolution in Iran carries the potential to unleash a true Islamic Reformation.