How Iran Destroyed its Economy

Take back your personal data with Incogni! Use code HINDSIGHT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/hindsight. When Iran’s Shah tied the country’s future to rapid modernization and Western power, prosperity rose—but so did resentment. The 1979 revolution replaced the monarchy with an Islamic Republic, followed by war with Iraq, isolation, and an economy reorganized around survival, oil, and state control. In the decades that followed, Iran pursued strategic autonomy: building an economy designed to survive sanctions, resist coercion, and preserve national independence—but subsidies replaced legitimacy, and regional power projection justified economic sacrifice. Since the late 2010s, that model has begun to fail. Sanctions hardened, oil revenues shrank, infrastructure aged, and inflation eroded daily life, exposing the economic limits of permanent resistance. Daily life became unaffordable for millions. Today’s unrest reflects a reckoning: a system built to protect sovereignty now struggles to provide prosperity.