The idea of an Irano-Islamic model of development has been in vogue in Iran in the past few years. A number of writers have written in support of this notion or have tried to produce actual plans to show how it works in practice. In the present paper, I shall argue that all models of development are regarded as technologies and as such are context sensitive and bearers of the values invested in them by either their inventors or their end-users. From here it follows that producing an Irano-Islamic model of development should be, in principle, feasible. Nevertheless, I shall further argue that such a model (assuming that it is efficient and designed rationally), would not differ radically (save minor details) from other efficient and rationally designed models of development used in other countries. The upshot of the argument of the paper is that to call an efficient and rationally designed model of development, which is devised in Iran, an ‘Irano-Islamic Model of Development’ would largely amount to an exercise in semantics rather than a substantive activity.
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