Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei addressed a group of IRGC commanders as part of the IRGC’s national congress of high command on Sunday. The Leader criticized the recent calls for slowing country's military and warfare expansion as sheer ‘folly,’ and that no rational and prudent government would abandon its defensive and military machinery in pursuit of the countenance of other hegemonic powers.
“IRGC has been engaged in valuable defensive, cultural, and construction projects during its fruitful years; it has been a strong bulwark for the Revolution and a prominent player in foreign and domestic security arrangements, and country’s element of identity which has acted as driving engine toward the ideals of the Revolution,” Leader lavished praise upon the IRGC. “A grave threat and deviation has been confronting the major elements and spiritual as well as soft power of the Establishment and distorting these constituting parts of the system; a crucial part of this soft war has been absolute distrust in the hegemonic powers spearheaded by the US, with the distrust even stronger today.”
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution asserted that Revolutionary and jihadi action was prerequisite for establishment of any ‘modern Islamic civilization’ in line with defending the system arising from the Revolution; “now, after 37 years, and especially after the Imposed War of Iraq, we have been understanding the depth and the quiddity of the late Imam Khomeini’s directive in establishment of the IRGC back in the 1980s; truly, the IRGC has been a strong bulwark of the Revolution,” the Leader quoted the founder of the Revolution.
“A mission of the IRGC is providing security of the nation inside and beyond the borders; if we provide security beyond our borders, then we will succeed in safeguarding inside from its consequences which would engulf the nation otherwise,” Ayatollah Khamenei told the meeting. “An element of the independence in national level is to defy the order posed by the hegemonic and imperialist powers, which has been under onslaught of the domestic as well as foreign elements, since they would assume independence as being isolated from the rest of the world; for example, if we reject homosexuality, we would be labeled as isolated in the world. The corollary of the proponents is that so we should recognize it as legitimate human behavior and not an aberration,” he objected.
Ayatollah Khamenei counted a second attempt to distort components of the power of the Establishment; ‘to equal idealism to irrationality and abandoning logic;’ “idealism is the very logic, since a nation devoid of ideals would be, as today’s western societies, hollowed out entities,” he told the meeting.
Elsewhere in his address, the Leader touched upon a motive recurrent in his address, namely, distrust of the US; “some parties, however, would not come to terms with this distrust; they would pay only lip service to this distrust, but they would not really believe in their hearts that the US would not be trusted; in nuclear negotiation, we were true to our motives and ideals in our absolute distrust of the US through clinging to our codes of conduct in dealing with powers," he emphasized.
“If we open paths to US enticements in different sectors, indeed we will provide them with covert and evident means to infiltrate our economy, culture, and society, with the result being sacrificing our progress in all fields; they have been insisting that we negotiate with them on all regional issues; but, what would they seek in any possible negotiation? I believe they seek actively to curb Iran’s influence which the US has been evaluating Iran as the major cause of their failure in their Middle East adventurism,” said the Leader, “laxity should not be the weapon for us and all officials in the government and elsewhere, including the military; rather, we should brace for a hostile world to protect our country and glory effectively. I would recommend the IRGC especially to save the spirit of asceticism and the denial of the world pleasures through fostering Revolutionary and jihadi sentiment, which have been pivots of the IRGC,” he concluded.
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