Different circumstances, different scope, different countries. I still don't know specifically what you are referring to in terms of financing what guerrilla wars. The Soviet Union was trying to match the US in terms of weapons systems and armaments in addition to funding proxies in the Cold War. Iran does not any such pretensions anymore than North Korea does.
2. I don't know why do you bring Poland into this? If you wanted to impressed me you are extremely unlucky because I was born in Poland, even worse I spent 80's there I even participated in some strikes. It wasn't heroic at all.
I figured you were born in Eastern Europe. Sorry, but I spent two years in Warsaw, 1981-83, and found the struggle very heroic. The Pope and Reagan were able to support a movement that would eventually lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall. After Poland, I lived four years in West Berlin and visited East Berlin frequently. I am indeed puzzled by your perspective. Were you a member of the Communist Party?
3. Stalin passed away in 1953. So obviously I don't remember those times, but my parents and grandparents do. You visited USSR after his death. It was different country by then.
Not that much different for those who lived there. Ask people like Sharansky about life in the Soviet Union in the post-Stalinist era. Read his The Case for Democracy
4. I know Iran a bit. I would compare it rather to Yugoslavia in 70's than to USSR at any time. Iranian are pretty well connected with the world. They move freely around their country. They are relatively well educated, and can study the subject of their choice. No sane person would choose to live in Stalinist Russia over Iran. So I believe the is a ground for comparison.
How do you "know Iran a bit?" I would rather not live in either place. Of course, a lot depends on who you are in terms of where you live. If you among the controlling elite, it really doesn't matter that much.
I hope that the crazy Mullahs will go away peacefully. Because Iran is a beautiful country with enormous tourist potential. And with urban Muslim population craving to adopt modern life style.
If you know just a little bit about Iranian history, you must know that the mullahs will not go away peacefully. They have been part of the Iran's ruling elite for a thousand years. In Iran they are referred to as the "Shah" and Shaykh": the king and the cleric. The Shah's father, Reza Shah, tried to remove the mullahs from power in the 1920's, including taking away their lands and other institutions of power. After his exile in 1941, his son initially restored the mullahs to the trappings of power, but then the White Revolution of the 1960s led again to reforms that stripped the mullahs of their lands and power. Khomeini's return in 1979 and the hijacking of the Iranian revolution just is another chapter in the story.
Iran changed overnight. I was there during the Shah's fall from power and Khomeini's takeover. I left on March 31, 1979. Iran went, virtually overnight, from a country where you could buy Playboy on the newsstands and the Iranian parliament had more women in it than the US Congress did to a fundamentalist Islamic country that forced women to wear chadors and the advent of sexual apartheid.