Kaustubh Sule

Sixth, the Shah's reforms swelled the size of the two classes that posed the greatest challenges to his monarchy: the intelligentsia, and the urban working class. Their resentment of the Shah also grew, as they were now stripped of organizations that had represented them in the past and given them avenues for status, such as political parties, prof

This is not an exhaustive list, but you can see the pattern: An elitist, pro-Western, anti-Islamic leader, propped up by the US, initially succeeded in modernizing the economy, but hit some roadblocks and didn’t act decisively, letting the opposition take over.

Ninth, because the Shah didn’t have riot police, he frequently deployed the army to stop demonstrations, but the army was not prepared for that, and sometimes demonstrators were killed. This fired people up against the regime, but Pahlavi didn’t want to overuse force. The result was a deployment of the army who couldn’t use its weapons to quell dis

The Shah threw himself into a modernization and Westernization of the country, the white revolution: He carried out land reform where land was redistributed to farmers, landlords were compensated for their land by shares of privatized state-owned factories, transport networks were expanded, dam and irrigation projects carried out, malaria eradicate

In the 19th Century, the British and Russia fought for dominance in Central Asia. One of the theaters of this fight was Iran, and Britain generally prevailed. It used this power to create a monopoly on Iranian oil, kept most of the profits, and supported friendly governments, like the 1921 Pahlavi coup d’état, a pro-Western military man. In 1941, d

Here is some more context. The US had 82% cumulative broad money supply growth over the past decade. Egypt had 638% broad money supply growth during that same time period. And the Egyptian pound underperformed the dollar by approximately that ratio; a decade ago a US dollar was worth a bit under 8 Egyptian pounds, and today it’s worth a bit over 50

Myself and many others would argue that a major currency devaluation is a type of default. In that sense, the US government defaulted on bondholders in the 1930s by devaluating the dollar vs gold, and then again in the 1970s by decoupling the dollar from gold entirely. The 2020-2021 period was also a type of default, in the sense that the broad mon

The fertilizer connection you haven't thought about

There's another hidden story within this story, which could hit your grocery bill just as hard as higher gas prices: fertilizers.

The Middle East and North Africa region — what we call MENA — is crucial for global fertilizer production. The region produces about 30% of the world's nitrogen fertilize

Because of its peculiar history, the Japanese auto market was marked by the lack of a strong monopoly. Its auto sector, for instance, always featured a range of firms — like Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda, Subaru, and Suzuki. They refused to merge even when asked to do so by the state. The ecosystem was marked by a fine balance between co