I am not talking about culture, but about geography.
One major war is enough to set the country back for decades. Tell me, which other country in the region (besides Iraq) lost hundreds of billion dollars in one war, hundreds of thousands of its population, major infrastructure, etc? Comparing the Kurdish conflict with the Iran-Iraq war is laughable.
How many of them were women and children who needed shelter, food and other basic necessities? Iran spend tons of money to help these people, with sometimes little international help.
When did I claim that sanctions aren't effective?
Most socially stable country, yes. Still the wars and other things around us affects us in every way; refugees, drugs problem, terrorism, etc.
Who said I am a fan of the Shah? The Shah did not much better, and the country was still in its early days of (social) development. Iran has significantly changed since that era. Not only negatively (politically), but also positively.
The larger the country, the more difficult it is to govern.
Geographically speaking then Turkey is in the Middle East region (Anatolia was always part of the Middle East). Only a tiny part of Turkey is "European" but that part of Europe is located further to the east than all of Libya.
Well, basically all the countries in the region who have been plagued with wars. Yemen, Lebanon, now Syria, Palestine just to name a few.
The bigger the country and population is the bigger the causalities tend to be. One must look at the percentage. If 100 million people would die in China in a supposed war then less than 10% of the entire population would have perished.
Now if a major war happened in let's say Lebanon and "just" 2 million died then half of the population would have perished.
The destruction in Iran mostly happened in the Kurdish areas in Iran, Khuzestan or Arabistan as it was once known as and a few other provinces.
How much of Ishafan, Shiraz, Tabriz, Tehran, Mashhad or Qom was damaged? I don't know but I imagine very little.
The brain drain is a much bigger problem.
So all the 2 million Afghans who come to Iran are all beggars who don't contribute to the society? Are most of them not Turkic/Mongolian Hazaras who are nearly all Twelvers?
They contribute like all immigrants elsewhere. There are hundred of thousands illegal immigrants in KSA as well and they contribute too. You just don't see it.
I really doubt that the supposed help from the Iranian regime to those Afghan immigrants surpasses their contribution to Iran. How could it when the Iranian Mullah's can barely feed their own population in large parts of the country?
Well, many of your fellow countrymen did and besides I have read many articles that claim the same. Your export to Iraq last year was 4 billion dollars strong. That's some weak sanctions.
Anyway you can see some articles from this year (spring) that say that the sanctions on Iran are not working:
Commentary: Why the Iran Sanctions Don't Work | The National Interest
Why Sanctions on Iran Aren't Working | Stephen M. Walt
Why Economic Sanctions Rarely Work - Businessweek
U.S. commander says Iran sanctions not working – CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs
Is this sufficient enough to make a claim?
What does socially stable mean? I think that KSA is referred to as the most stable country by most analysts and that is not always seen as a good thing in our region.
Are you not a monarchist?
That is often the case but that has little to do with the economical perspective in this case a countries GDP. USA would not have been the biggest economy in the world had they had a population like Qatar.
Qatar tops the list of the world's richest countries by Forbes.[10]
Two very different things.
