Shahrzad Elghanayan: How Iran Killed Its Future

Shahrzad Elghanayan, a news photo editor, is working on a book about her grandfather.

Imagine where the U.S. economy would be today if John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie or any of the magnates who helped turn America into an industrialized society had been gunned down by a revolutionary firing squad. In 1979, that is what happened in Iran to my grandfather, Habib Elghanian, Iran's most prominent Jewish industrialist and philanthropist. My grandfather's execution was not only a personal loss but a turning point for Iran.

His execution and the subsequent fleeing of businessmen from Iran contributed to derailing the country's chances of building a modern, diversified, export-based economy, and foreshadowed Iran's neglect of its most valuable resource: its people. Since the revolution in 1979, a new generation of Iranians has been left to foot the hefty losses caused by the Islamic Republic's hostility to independent businessmen, its fixation on oil, uranium and nuclear power and its cantankerous rhetoric against Israel.

In the months after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's return to Iran on Feb. 1, 1979, about 200 former high-ranking members of the shah's security forces, military and government were killed, many charged with "association with the shah's regime." That May, my grandfather was the first businessman to be executed. During a show trial that lasted no longer than 20 minutes, he was falsely charged with being a "Zionist spy" and a "corrupter on Earth." Newspaper stories and editorials around the world, including in the Los Angeles Times, carried the news of the execution of "Iran's plastics king."...