Addressing the ceremony to begin the new Iranian University Year via videoconference on Sunday, Rouhani stressed that through careful observance of health protocols the new wave of COVID-19 will be prevented.
He also underlined the significance of virtual education as a requirement for social distancing to contain the spread of the pandemic.
The president thanked the Iranian universities for rendering a combination of in-person and virtual education during the pandemic.
Noting that the Iranian nation has been entangled with two challenges of pandemic and US sanctions in the past months, Rouhani said we must both rely on our own capabilities and provide the conditions for interaction with the world.
"Today is a day of double resistance for the Iranian nation: Resistance against the unprecedented sanctions with conspiracies against the nation and resistance against the dangerous coronavirus.”
“Such resistance will be possible through trust and hope. If a nation does not trust itself and feels defeated in the face of enormous external pressure, that nation will not succeed in its lofty national goals.”
Noting that "the current sanctions are unprecedented in the history of Iran, and perhaps in the history of the world,” Rouhani said, “We have been facing this severe sanctions for over two years, but we did not allow our enemies to achieve their main goal, which was to break the grandeur of the Iranian establishment and force the nation to surrender to their unjust will.”
"The reason behind such achievement was the trust of the nation."
He added, “People trusted themselves, the establishment and the government. As long as this trust exists, this nation will continue to resist.”
Therefore, he said, we have to stand on our own feet and look toward our own capabilities.
“We have to use our domestic abilities and, but there is also the fact that without interacting with the world.”
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