Civil Society in Iran and Eastern Europe - A Good Analogy for U.S. Foreign Policy?

Apparently Charles Krauthammer assesses Obama's Iranian foreign policy as an abject failure - or perhaps more accurately a missed opportunity - from both a strategic and moral perspective by not supporting Iran's opposition. Krauthammer goes one step further, evoking eveb regime change

"What should we do? Pressure from without -- cutting off gasoline supplies, for example -- to complement and reinforce pressure from within. The pressure should be aimed not at changing the current regime's nuclear policy -- that will never happen -- but at helping change the regime itself"

The analogy here is Reagan's public and covert support to opposition movements in Eastern Europe (i.e Solidarity in Poland), which provided hope to dissidents and helped sustain momentum for regime change and democratization with civil society playing a major role. I'm not sure if this is really analogus to Iran, however. It was more likely Gorbachev's reforms, and the signal (or lack of credibility) that he would use military force to keep communist parties in power, which provided civil society in E. Europe much of their momentum. This is the argument I made in the following article (see abstract). Of course, if we push the causal chain further back, we could attribute Gorby's reforms to Reagan's tough stand against the Soviets, kicked off with the "evil empire" speech.