Despite their differences in the Iraq and Iran war that lasted from 1980-1988, the two countries have more in common than just being oil-rich countries in the Middle East. Both studies demonstrate extensive cases of embezzlement, nepotism and bribery under the corruption umbrella. As evidenced by the comparative graph above, most indicators place both nations at the bottom of the socio-politico and economic development line, mostly as a result of the factors we have expounded throughout our country-specific analysis. An Angolan journalist jailed for denouncing the war and corruption fuelled by oil and diamonds in his country once expounded that "It's fashionable to say that we are cursed by our mineral riches. That's not true. We are cursed by our leaders" (Salopek 2000). It would be plausible to debunk such statement by looking at the case of Norway, but this statement rightly captures the essence corruption in nations which are abundant in oil or minerals,  as the reality is that the main difference between these two regions is the culture as well as the fact that democracy arrived to Norway before oil was discovered, whereas, in the case of Iran and Iraq, oil was used by already established undemocratic forms of government to pursue their political consolidation as well as their personal enrichment. In light of this great level of informal (and corruptive) governance commonalities found in our analysis, we then propose a few solutions which we argue are paramount in the long term development of both nations:

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• The critical question remains what can be done to free these nations of the current vicious circle of corruption? Thomas Palley argued back in 2003 that a "significant share of oil revenues should be disbursed to the population immediately" (Palley 2003). It would be plausible to reject this suggestion on the grounds of whether the country can afford such a programme. Nevertheless, the oil sector has been for decades the major source of corruption, for this reason, we believe that taking the money out of the hands of the corrupt political elite and transferring it to the population would probably be the most powerful anti-corruption measure available today (Gillies 2010b). Clearly, the anti-corruption schemes shown above have had little to no effect in going after the ‘bad guys'. In light of this, oil disbursements to the population would be an effective measure which would allow the citizenry to regain trust in the executive power, and at the same time, this policy may assuage the rising levels of poverty and may allow families to not rely on many informal practices which are commonplace these days. This solution was supported by both Robert Looney (2008) and Philippe Le Billon (2005), who argued that given the large mineral riches of these two nations, and given the fact that most of the corruption in both nations is the result of oil revenue embezzlement and subsequent conflicts arising from oil management, this solution would be a starting point by tackling the direct source of the problem. 

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• A second solution we propose is a new constitution, so that in the case of Iran, citizens may regain trust in the executive by writing a constitution which would include essential elements such as corruption charges and a strong ethics committee which prosecutes the numerous cases of nepotism and embezzlement currently plaguing Iran. In the case of Iraq, we believe this solution would also prove to be a successful venture, as a new constitution would allow Iraqui citizens to benefit from a fresh start, leaving behind all the conflict and sectarianism inherent to the current period, post-2003, and the current political establishment which is dominated, as in the case of Iran, by cases of embezzlement and nepotism. This solution was expounded by Al-Ali (2014), and indeed, a constitution which allows for a reformation of the different government branches would undoubtedly allow for a progressive change and crackdown on former corrupt officials, who would not be protected under a new political framework.