Iran, its neighbors, the world and economy

To begin with, I prefer to figure out where does Iran stand among its neighbors and in the world. I found some data from Human Development Reports 2005 and 2004 and the World Bank site. Here is the table of countries around Iran and some regions in the world ranked by per capita GDP (US $ 2003). [I dont know how to post a table. I just used paint brush to convert it to a picture!] It is clear that Iran is a middle class country. An average one in Middle Income Class. Most of its neighbors are doing better than it. Most of them are oil producing countries, like Iran with less population and more oil. The countries without oil are in bad conditions, except for Turkey and Lebonan and of course Israel. Latin America and central Europe are doing better than Iran. The world is doing much better as well.
The main reason for this situation was the negative average growth rate for 28 years (1975-2003). During this time, the world grew with a rate of 1.4 percent per year. Iran was going back by 0.3 percent. The other regions with negative growth were low income countires, Central Europe (because of their transition from a planned economy), some rich arab countries (because of their enourmosly high oil revenue). This was the effect of thr Revolution (1975) and the eight years war with Iraq (1980-88). Afeter that, Iran's economy began to grow, but not so fast. With 2.1 percent growth rate, it takes 34 years to double the per capita income. Long time!