For those of you who haven't heard of We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel, it is a song about history.  More specifically, it outlines every major event (and several boxing matches) in American history from about 1949-1990 in chronological order.  It's actually extensive enough that a book of American history used the song as a guide for what to talk about for the period from 1949-1990.  It also has a fairly famous video.

What's almost amazing as the depth of the song itself is the sheer number of adaptions and parodies made to the tune (scroll down a little on the linked page for the list).  Some of them have just used the (admittedly catchy) tune, but others have continued to use the history theme, and some of them have been fairly impressive.  Here's a list of the three most impressive random histories I've seen set to Billy Joel.

Singapore (a.k.a "I Live in Singapura")

This song is the epitome of a random history.  I didn't know anything about Singaporean history until this video, but this song and video were hilarious anyway.  And while the song is still funny even in a vacuum, a little context can go a long way in making the video even better.

Political Scandals (a.k.a "We Didn't Start Satire")

This one is a pure song.  The video helps with some context, but the song is the real humor here.  It outlines almost every political scandal in Washington (and some in other states as well) starting in 1981.  This was written for the 30th year of Capitol Steps, a satire group from DC, and their knowledge shows.

Video Games (a.k.a "The Wii Didn't Start the Fire")

This is definitely my favorite song and video on the list.  These guys did a great job with the lyrics (which cover the history of video games from their beginning until about 2010), the sound effects (they frequently use sound clips from the things they're referencing, which are awesome if you recognize them), and the video (which uses video clips from virtually everything they mention).  They even kept the video in a similar style to Billy Joel.

The Iran Trap

Recently, I've been reading The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier for my history class.  It's a fairly interesting book that describes why the poorest countries (which account for approximately 1 billion people, hence the title) seem to be so far behind the rest of the world.  Collier describes four "traps" that these countries seem to fall into.  The traps are:

The Conflict Trap

This one is about civil wars and coups.  Both end up costing the countries billions of dollars, and in the few years after a civil war or coup the country is more likely to have another.  Collier also argues that the longer a country stays trapped in civil war, the more people are likely to profit from it and the increased interest in keeping the civil war going.

The Natural Resources Trap

This trap is counterintuitive.  Collier states that poor countries that suddenly gain abundant natural resources will likely be worse off than before for three reasons:
1) More resources means that conflict over those resources is more likely.
2) The more money the government can make off of the resources, the less they need to tax the citizens, which leads to a lack of financial accountability.
3) Dutch Disease

Landlocked with Bad Neighbors

Countries with access to the sea have access to the world.  Landlocked countries have access to their neighbors.  If a country is landlocked and their neighbors are unfriendly or in a state of turmoil, the country suffers.

Bad Governance in a Small Country

A bad government can destroy an economy very quickly.  So in a small country, where countries are already wary of investing because of the smaller workforce, bad governance can doom any prospect of foreign investment.

So now that that's out of the way, let's see how the traps apply to a country that's been in the news a lot recently: Iran.  In order:

1) Iran isn't caught in the conflict trap.  This isn't surprising when you think about the state of Iran now, but it is impressive that Iran avoided the trap 30 years ago.  They were able to avoid falling into a state of constant warfare by having a brutal regime that essentially exterminated all competition.

2) Iran also avoided the natural resources trap, despite having great oil reserves.  Part of the reason is that oil was discovered decades ago, which gave Iran time to build structure around the industry.  Another part of the reason is that the oil was discovered by the British, who had experience in the oil industry.  These factors combined to give Iran a stable oil business.

3) Iran's not landlocked.  Simple as that.

4) Iran also isn't a small country, and because the oil industry is so strong, all the government has to do is stay out of the way and then they can dive into their money pools like Scrooge McDuck.