Why Vast Natural Wealth Leads to Mass Poverty

The result of this complex interplay is a dramatic spatial and economic wealth disparity. In Tehran and other major urban centers, pockets of extreme wealth—marked by luxury homes, foreign cars, and a consumption culture that mimics the West—exist in stark contrast to the burgeoning slums and poverty-stricken rural areas. The old revolutionary promise of wealth redistribution and empowering the mostazafan (the deprived) has been inverted, creating a new, ideologically aligned oligarchy that replaces the old Pahlavi-era elite, yet maintains and even deepens the gap between the haves and the have-nots.