Excellent point. One key distinction I see between Iran and Egypt, however, is demography. Iran has a stable population, and based on their current birth rate of 1.7 children per woman, they will even see a modest decline in the medium-term future. Contrast this with Egypt's exploding population and their pronounced youth bulge which are destablizing their society and eating up any economic progress.

Also, Iran has lots of oil that it can export to rebuild its economy. Apart from the Suez Canal and a little bit of tourism, Egypt has no economic basis whatsoever.

This looks like a good rabbit hole to go down.

as they say, science asks that you give them one miracle (the big bang) and they can explain everything. at its core, science is also a faith based religion.

Apparently after the Iran Iraq war the Mullahs were paying women to have 3-4 children, to quickly "grow a new generation". As a consequence Iran has a very young and healthy demographic today.
Afaik Egypt also has a quickly growing population.

Iran's birth rates have been declining precipitously since the mid-80s. Most experts assume that this is an implicit "vote with the womb" against their theocratic regime. They also have an unusually educated female population (by the standards of a muslim country), which is a factor known to be strongly associated with lower birth rates across countries and cultures. Since the 90s, their birth rate has been hovering around 1.7-1.8 children per woman, indicating a modest population decline will hit them in the near future. Their population isn't actually that young anymore by the way.

By contrast, Egypt has a significantly younger population today and their birth rate is still around 3 children per woman, so they're still in the midst of explosive, exponential growth.
On top of all of that, Egypt already has a far higher true population density since only a tiny fraction of their nominaly huge country is actually suited for human settlement. The geographic distribution of Iran's population is more spread out.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 15 2023 10:01am

id bet on one miracle vs hundreds

Right. I see that in recent years, Iran's birth rate has dropped significantly. Interesting.
Its possible to see on a demographic chart there is a large generation of 25-40 years olds but now the fertility rate is depressed.

This fact is quite incredible, "Half of Iran's population was under 35 years old in 2012"

Another factor to keep in mind with regard to the Egypt vs Iran comparison is that the Egyptian military is propped up by the West in return for them keeping the Suez Canal open. With Iran's revolutionary guard, there is no outside force which is similarly invested in their continued existence and power.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 15 2023 05:30pm