A Review and Analysis of Iran’s Current Economic Status

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became Iran’s sixth president after winning the 2005 presidential election by popular vote. He placed second after Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani in the first round amid rumors surfaced that the Revolutionary Guard and the Basiij Militia had engineered his election. However, in the second round he handily defeated Rafsanjani to become president. Throughout his presidential campaign and after, he resorted to populist slogans such as equal distribution of wealth, economic justice, thoughtfulness and compassion (mehrvarzi), etc., to timely take advantage of people’s emotions during a period of rapidly rising oil revenues and the potential threat of a U.S. invasion was becoming serious after Bush’s notorious State of the Union speech that put Iran a part of an axis of evil.