“The coincidence of Islamic awakening meetings with the anniversary of Imam Khomeini’s demise is a blessed event,” said Ali Akbar Velayati late on Thursday in Tehran.
Velayati, the veteran diplomat, who chaired Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 1981 and 1997, made the remark at the meeting of the World Forum for Islamic Awakening (WFIA) where he was the Secretary General of the Forum.
“Since the invasion of colonizers to the Islamic World in the 19th century, there has been more than 200 years of different waves of Islamic Awakening,” Velayati referred to the historic roots of Islamic Awakening.
The senior aid to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution on international affairs, then tried to give a definition to the Islamic Awakening saying that, “Islamic Awakening means a return to restoring the Islamic values in order to restore the glorious time of Islamic civilization.” He evaluated the movement ‘in tides and ebbs with a general upward trend.’
“No one has ever been like Imam Khomeini, among the Muslim clerics, whether Sunni or Shia, with such knowledge, chastity, and confidence in God,” asserted the former foreign minister who now heads Strategic Research Center of Iran’s Expediency Council.
He underlined that although Imam Khomeini’s movement started in Iran, it was continued in the whole Islamic world and then in the non-Islamic countries.
“The day Imam Khomeini rose, he stood against the most powerful figure of arrogant power in the whole Middle East and the Islamic Word [the last Shah of Iran], who was supported by the US, but Imam Khomeini toppled him,” highlighted Ayatollah Khamenei’s senior aid.
Velayati contended that, “though Imam Khomeini was labeled by some western media to be supported by the eastern bloc, his behavior demonstrated no allegiance to either West, or East, and was quite non-aligned.”
“While the former USSR decided to invade Afghanistan, Imam Khomeini told the ambassador of the Soviets that they will be defeated in Afghanistan, while the Soviets were at the pick of their power, and then they lost the war in Afghanistan and it was the start of disintegration of the Eastern bloc,” reassured Velayati, referring to the years he was the foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Velayati said, “Imam Khomeini advised Mikhail Gorbachev [the Former General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union] that communism will be sent to the political museum of the world, but when you get rid of it do not fall in the western values,” referring to the letter of the Late Imam Khomeini delivered to Gorbachev on January 7, 1989.
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