ABSTRACT
This chapter explores four key aspects of the region's first revolutionary Islamic regime: the evolution of Iranian power structures since the late 1980s, foreign policy, macroeconomic policy - including Iran's foreign trade regime, and the relationship between politics and religion in the republic. Its main purpose is to question whether the Iranian Islamic revolutionary experience can be emulated and, whether Iran has been able to produce a comprehensive socioeconomic and political system that is uniquely Islamic and, as such, is quite distinct from capitalist and centrally planned systems. The features of the Iranian case chosen for further comment in the chapter have brought to the fore the endemic difficulties, in analytical terms, of dealing with the process of change — whether political, social, or economic — in the modern world. The very policies of Iran's post-Khomeini leadership have been designed to strengthen the presence and role of the Iranian bourgeoisie.
