Shadi Hamid considers it:
One can envision a democratically-elected Iranian government that pursues nuclear weapons, offers rhetorical support to Hamas and Hezbollah, but also enjoys better relations with the U.S. and the international community, because democracies, all other things being equal, can be expected to be less reckless and inconsistent. In democracies, foreign policy decision-making is distributed among a larger number of people, with more veto points, and is to some degree subject to popular consent, rather than being overly dependent on one individual or a small clique of individuals as is often the case in autocratic regimes.
This is assuming, of course, that Iran's next regime is a democratic one.
