From Chernobyl to Bandar Abbas: Is Iran facing its Soviet moment?

The devastating port blast on Iran’s southern coast has prompted comparisons to the Chernobyl disaster, with some Iranian thinkers seeing echoes of the Soviet Union’s final days in their own country’s unraveling.

Like the explosion at the nuclear power plant in 1986, the deadly blast at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port—reportedly caused by missile fuel stored at a civilian facility—has become a symbol of decay, incompetence, and state secrecy.

Chernobyl ushered in political change and the collapse of Communism. Could this be the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic?

Historical analogies are never perfect, but they are often revealing.

In the late 18th century, both Russia and Iran were backward agrarian societies ruled by monarchs, burdened by inequality, and haunted by their failures to modernize. Russia's army was a formidable force, but the empire still lagged behind Western Europeans in industry and capital accumulation.

By the mid 19th century, leftist and liberal movements had begun to emerge in Russia, aiming to abolish serfdom and challenge autocracy as part of a broader push for modernization. In Iran too, the educated few, often inspired by the west, were beginning to call for fundamental change.

In Russia, this quest culminated in the dual revolutions of 1917. In Iran, it led to the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 which brought Iranians partial representation but little material progress.

That began only with the rise of Reza Shah in 1925.

Reza Shah confronted the clergy and their medieval traditions' hold on Iranian society. He oversaw an extensive program of modernisation that continued under his son and transformed the country in many ways.

But without democratic development and under pressure from leftist and clerical opposition, Iran’s own “October Revolution” came in 1979.

As in Russia, Iran's post-revolutionary regime was anti-West. It was largely backed by pro-Soviet activists—most of whom were soon crushed by the religious camp while some quietly adapted and remained in the system.

The Islamic Republic, like the Soviet Union, sidelined foreign capital, prioritized homegrown militarization, and sustained itself on repression and slogans. After almost half a century, the revolutionary fervor is gone, corruption is rampant, and the economy is wrecked with years of sanctions and mismanagement.

Could it be argued then that the Islamic Republic today stands at a similar crossroads to that of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s? I think not.

Yes, the theocracy is under enormous pressure from the United States and Israel. A clear majority reject the ruling ideology and want out, as evidenced by widespread protests and growing defiance of Islamic restrictions.

But the Soviet Union had reform-minded leadership.

By the 1980s, some Soviet leaders recognized the system’s failure."The only one truly believing in Communism at the time was chief ideologist Mikhail Suslov," the last leader of Armenia’s Communist Party, Karen Demirchian, told this author in 1999.

And at the very top stood Mikhail Gorbachev, who became General Secretary in 1985 and launched the reformist movement of Perestroika and Glasnost.

By contrast, Iran is ruled by an 85-year-old cleric, Ali Khamenei, who is no Gorbachev— and may even have a few lessons to teach Suslov in rigidity. Khamenei's security forces have shown no hesitation in shooting unarmed protesters.

Gorbachev could act because the Soviet Union was run by a monolithic party that controlled the state, the military, and the security services. No party apparatus rules in Iran. Power rests with one man who presides over a web of largely dysfunctional institutions, tied and surviving mainly by their will to repress.

The Soviet Union collapsed not by popular uprising, but with Gorbachev's top-down liberalization. No such campaign would be entertained let alone initiated by the leader of the Islamic Republic.

The explosion in Bandar Abbas may have shocked and angered Iranians, but it was no Chernobyl in scale—and it's unlikely to be a Chernobyl in impact. Khamenei has never been fond of reform. Until he’s gone, any 'Soviet moment' is more of a warning than a turning point.