ABSTRACT
Iran is the most important country in the Middle East. The Iranian revolution and its anti-Western outcome took Iran out of the orbit of the Western powers and seems to have pushed the country toward a nonaligned position. Liberal nationalists did not propose any specific economic plan other than advocating greater national control of resources; most of their concern was with constitutional rights and a nonaligned foreign policy. In fact, the economic development plan of Khomeinis Islamic Republic, and its constitution, emphasized the determination to reduce foreign control and to develop along self-reliant ways. The Iranian revolution is best explained by an approach in which competition for resources among domestic groups is embedded in more general trends of superpower competition and changing patterns of global economic interaction. The data on the uneven sectoral development of the Iranian economy nicely explain the massive rural-to-urban migration.
