What Managing a Post-Revolution Iran Would Look Like

When the dust settles and the Islamic Republic is dissolved, the transitional government will face the daunting task of managing a country of eighty-eight million people that has been economically hollowed out by forty-five years of corruption.

The immediate challenge will be the stabilization of the currency and the food supply. The statistics are stark as nearly sixty percent of the Iranian economy is currently controlled by bonyads, which are opaque religious foundations run by the IRGC. Dismantling these conglomerates and returning the wealth to the public sector will be the first test of the new leadership.

Demographically, Iran is in a unique position that could either be its salvation or its undoing. The population is highly educated and relatively young, with a median age of thirty-two, yet it suffers from one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world.

The post-revolutionary government must immediately incentivize the return of the diaspora. This involves not just political freedom but the promise of a meritocratic economy where positions are earned by skill rather than religious loyalty. The integration of ethnic minorities, including Kurds, Baluchis, and Arabs, into a federalist framework will be essential to prevent the balkanization of the state.

With the world's second-largest natural gas reserves and fourth-largest oil reserves, Iran has the capital to rebuild, provided the funds are not siphoned off for terrorism.

The transition period will require a council to manage the hyperinflation and unemployment that currently plagues the nation. If managed correctly, the release of Iranian human capital from the shackles of fundamentalism could trigger an economic boom that rivals the rapid rise of the Asian Tigers in the late twentieth century.