Introduction

After the revolution of 1979, the memory of foreign influence and control over the Iranian economy prompted the new government to expropriate the assets of foreign investors, and ever since, that climate of distrust toward the presence of foreign entities in the Iranian economy has lingered with various levels of intensity. On the other hand, the same events destroyed the foreign investors' trust in the stability of Iran as an investment market. As a result, Iran has spent the past two and a half decades in relative economic isolation, which perhaps has not served Iran ...