For decades, the Iranian economy has been cobbled together by religious-bureaucratic regimes that have employed mandates, regulations, price controls, subsidies and a wide variety of other interventionist devices, in an attempt to achieve their goals. It's all been kept afloat – barely afloat – by oil revenues.

Shortly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took power as president, Iran began to draw the ire of the United States, Europe and their allies over a number of issues related to Iran's nuclear