…André Gunder Frank gave the argument its sharpest formulation. Frank rejected the notion that poor countries were simply behind and would eventually catch up. Instead, he argued that underdevelopment is not a starting condition but a produced one — that the wealth of the core is not merely correlated with the poverty of the periphery but generated by it. Applied to Iran, his logic is merciless: a self-sufficient Iran is not just inconvenient for Washington — it is structurally incompatible with the system Washington manages. The destruction of its entire industrial base — down to its technical colleges and engineering universities, the very institutions that would rebuild what the bombs unmake — is not a side effect of the campaign but a mandate: the center’s supremacy cannot be maintained so long as the periphery retains the human and material capacity to challenge it (Frank, 1967)…