The Shah of Shahs, ruler of Iran's Peacock Throne, once dreamed of lifting his country's backward economy at breakneck speed into the 21st century. Now that dream has been battered by months of rioting and country-wide strikes. The economy that Iranians confidently predicted would soon match that of West Germany or Japan now seems destined to compare with that of Turkey or Southern Italy.
Striking workers paralyzed key industries: power, communications, transport and, the heart of the nation's wealth, oil production. At the same time, the ravaging mobs concentrated their destructive efforts on the...
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