Saeed Jalili, Gholamali Haddad Adel, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf – three politicians who ran for president along with Hassan Rouhani in 2013 – were supposed to deliver speeches at a gathering dubbed “We are here as long as the struggle continues”, a ceremony organized by the Student Basij of Tehran University to mark national Student Day.
But Tehran Mayor Bagher Ghalibaf did not attend the gathering because he was in neighboring Iraq, Karbala to be more exact, to run the Shiite city as part of an agreement between Iran and Iraq which entrusts Tehran Municipality with administering the city’s affairs in the week leading to Arba’een [a Shiite Muslim religious observance that occurs 40 days after Ashura, which marks the martyrdom of the grandson of Prophet Muhammad on December 13].
According to Etemad, a daily, the following is what Saeed Jalili, a former Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council who previously led the Iranian nuclear negotiating team, had to tell the gathering:
The West seeks to use the weapon of coercion and hypocrisy to challenge the rights, values and interests of nations. The experience of the past 35 years shows that our nation has emerged victorious on all fronts. Our nation has been able to advance its cause at all times, and today the West is worried about the determination of the Iranian people which is helping bring about progress.
Universities should turn into bases for resistance economy. The sedition of 2009 [the unrest that erupted following the presidential election] had its root in failure to believe in the will of the people. Our enemy seeks to turn opportunities to threats and the sedition of 2009 was a glaring example of such policy.
The enemy knows that it has been unable to contain us, so it is now trying to contain our determination. The threats they issue are meant to throw our achievements and our struggle into doubt.
The enemy has used its first weapon, which is nothing but military action, against the Iranian nation. We were dragged into a war that Saddam’s Iraq imposed on our nation for eight years. The enemy knows that such weapons are too hollow. Now it is targeting the will of the Iranian nation which holds the key to our success. It knows that continued struggle would translate into back-to-back victories for the Iranians, so it seeks to eliminate the struggle itself.
In its bid to eliminate struggle the enemy would resort to means other than coercion, because it knows that such tactic won’t work in dealing with Iran. A third method the enemy employs is to promote what it describes as realism among Iranians. They want to instill realism in our foreign policy. They want us to see things the way they are. Hegemonic powers are not invincible; isn’t it the reality?
After the multiplication of the Iranian example, the enemy admitted that the losing streak of the Zionist regime has started. Isn’t this the reality? Why don’t they allow the reality to be seen?
