Nick Fountain

She sees that into their laws and constitution, they're writing things about how the previous regime was looting the national wealth and made Iran economically dependent on foreign capitalists.

In the constitution's preamble, they write, this time they weren't going to be subject to foreign exploitation and that this new nation had purged itself of foreign ideological influences.

One faction seemed to believe that Iran had to have economic growth powered at least in part by foreign investment, money from abroad.

Another faction felt that foreign investment would be a betrayal, could lead only to exploitation.

Like foreigners getting rich off Iran's oil again.

The students were protesting that the US had allowed the deposed Shah to come to New York for cancer treatment.

But more broadly, overthrowing the old regime had been about rejecting US influence.

Economically, the mood changed in favor of shutting out foreign investment.

One guy suggests banning foreign companies from getting any concessions, permission to operate in the country.

And Eva Leila writes in her book, they quickly whip up a line and put it in the Constitution.

Absolutely forbidding foreign concessions.

They go full protectionist.

Which meant for the coming decade, while growing global trade was lifting its peer countries, Iran was cut off voluntarily and through sanctions.

That proved pretty challenging.

At that same time, Iran and Iraq began a devastating eight-year war.

Iran needed foreign imports, like raw materials and consumer goods, which made surviving with a closed economy even more difficult.

When he was in college, he does his first academic research on Iran, a pretty cool project about the smuggling of cigarettes under sanctions.

Now he has a think tank focused on Iran and West Asia, and he researches and teaches about sanctions and their effects.

Right, and that period of opening up, that is the second key moment in our brief economic history.

A period during which Iran started inviting economic exchange with many countries, despite the U.S.