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Iran Has Missed Out on Global Prosperity
(Wall Street Journal) Robert D. Kaplan - The worldwide material and human progress of the past few decades has largely left Iran behind. In 1977 Iran's economy was 26% larger than Turkey's, 65% larger than South Korea's, and almost 5.5 times the size of Vietnam's - all countries with somewhat larger populations. In 2017 Turkey's economy was nearly 2.5 times the size of Iran's, South Korea's more than seven times, and Vietnam's had gone from less than 20% to 70%, according to Nadereh Chamlou, a former World Bank official. While poverty has declined in Iran, 40% of the population earns less than $10 a day. Today Iran is a pauperized and lonely nation. Its only allies are the murderous proxy militias it supports and Bashar Assad's regime in Syria. The regime seems stable, yet is widely seen as illegitimate by the population.