that is not to the Mullahs credit, I would bet the Shah had all that set up before the revolution, the Mullahs were at least smart enough not to tamper with those programs, though like I said, the Iranian teenagers spotlighted in that documentary felt they could get better education outside Iran, now they may have lived in a more remote area, not in Tehran
[after all the Shah had embarked on the beginning of a nuclear weapon program and the Mullahs merely picked it up from there]
but yes I too have met many Iranians in various tech based fields and they are doing quite well and they sure have no intention of going home, the one fellow I knew best was a whiz in computer science, he was working with one of my best friends at a Toronto based multinational making good money and they both transferred to the Swiss office where he is now a part time professor at the University of Zurich, married a gorgeous blonde Swiss girl and works in the same field but for a different company based in Zurich, making six figures easy.
Of course Iranians being Persian and not Arabs have always been ahead of the rest of the Muslim world, I thought though that Iraqis didn't lag too far behind, for all his brutality, Saddam did introduce modernization of the Iraqi education system in the 1980's, no doubt so he could have his own WMD specialists on the payroll, rather than having to find people from outside the country......
and at least Iranians have the option of leaving.....
I agree, the education system must have been there long before. Mullahs' role has been mainly not tampering with that too much.
Some of stories that I hear from Iranian scientists are reminiscent of Soviet Union. I grew up in former Soviet Union and heard stories about the life at universities there in the later stages of the Communist regime (1970s/early 1980s). "How to smuggle a Christmas tree into the university while Communists are not watching" type. What I hear from Iranians can be similar in spirit (trying to bypass what the regime imposes them and challanging the regime in little things), despite the ideologies of the two regimes being so different.
I wonder if there is anything more behind those superficial similarities. Sign that the regime might crack? Maybe not yet.