Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei received members of the Assembly on Thursday according to a tradition well established in past decades where Assembly members had visited the Leader after their session.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution criticized the current economic conditions and the much-vaunted growth rate as still not of concrete impact on the daily lives of the nation. “The economic management should act in a manner to minimize the effects of inflation, recession and smuggling on the life of the people and to persuade that there had been some concrete changes to the better,” he demanded. “Government and the system should be held responsible for providing the citizens with modest welfare and to tackle economic plights afflicting the public chronically.”
Ayatollah Khamenei turned to yet a different issue of social responsibility and the Western interpretation; “the so-called pseudo-thinkers and intellectuals take it for granted that the western teachings were the source of social responsibility and accountability to people; this is inaccuracy since responsibility is truly before God Himself and has roots in Holy Quran and Islamic tradition,” he emphasized.
Leader also said that the pillars of an Islamic system should be implementing Islamic rules and laws, albeit in an incremental manner and not to yield to pressures to abandon such rules; fighting Imperialism and absolute mistrust of it; “confrontation [with west] would not necessarily be military; rather, it is multi-faceted, having political, cultural, security, and social faces at the same time,” Ayatollah Khamenei told the meeting.
“The system should restore public justice on itself, should promote justice, should not tolerate tyranny and corruption, and should work to reinstate a new sense of national glory; these should be complemented by cultural hegemony, and rejection of infatuation with the alien culture; in cultural field, the Establishment should not fall to the lethargy and should work to achieve the sublime among its objectives,” the Leader recommended. “On economic terms, little has been done in Resistance Economy; thus, the proportionate impact on the lives of the public is also small; we regularly receive reports of public complaining of economic difficulties and suboptimal conditions; the policies, however commendable, have failed to become concrete in terms of their effects,” he objected.
Ayatollah Khamenei touched upon issues of confrontation with the US and the western cultural invasion and propaganda; “the propaganda, economic and cultural as it is, has sought to isolate the system and the public through creating gaps, and to delegitimize the officials; strong response and reliance on the common sense would be the most appropriate response to this challenge.”
“The US criticism of Iran’s elections under the pretext that the elections had not been free, has now been hollow; their election scandal and ethical and moral failure in campaign trail has belied their claims to fair and free elections and which would provide examples of good conduct; the mask of humility has no longer worked for them with moral collapse of candidates,” he concluded.
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