Are you sure that a dictatorship wouldn't have the potential to change the role Iran could play in any future war? I'm certainly not an international expert by any means, but it does seem to me that dictatorships try to stick together. An example today would be Venezuela and Cuba. Granted, both of these countries nationalized a lot of foreign investments and, in the process, made enemies of many in the United States and European Union. Iran would not necessarily go down that route in a dictatorship, but unless America becomes a dictatorship, too, I cannot see an Iranian dictatorship as earning Iran brownie points of trust from the United States or Europe.
In general, what does it mean when the younger generation "loses" in the awakening period? How does this change the national psyche and international policy? In America, if the Boomers had somehow "lost" their rebellion, Nixon could have remained President and the Vietnam War could have been escalated for many more years. That could have, in turn, made the cold war much more intense and could have precipitated some type of show-down between the US and Soviet Union.
So does the youth "winning" during an awakening somehow "distract" a population from its foreign enemies to focus more on internal psyche? If this is the case, then a youth "win" in Iran in the coming years could mean a much less confrontational Iran in the future, focused more on improving itself rather than building nukes. Yet I am sensing that you are not equating dictatorship with a "win" for the older generation in Iran, are you?
Bottom line: Could you elaborate more on these two concepts (youth "loses" during awakenings and democratic vs. dictatorship awakenings)? I am not following your logic that seems to suggest that a change in government would not affect the international scene in the future. This would be a most interesting full-fledged article if you were to write one...