It depends on how one defines "wealthy." The IMF has Iran at 25th out of 182 wealthiest in the world, World Bank has them at 29 out of 190, and the CIA has them at 25 out of 191 (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin... ). I think they're using "wealthy" to mean "wealthy enough for the government to fund non-trivial computer science research."