Universities Best Place to Address Country’s Issues

President Ebrahim Raisi said universities are best places to discuss and find solutions to address the recent unrest in the country that was sparked by the death of a young girl in police custody. 
“The important condition for these talks is the correct understanding of issues,” he said in a meeting with university chancellors on Saturday, President.ir reported.
He added that if problems are not analyzed correctly, or the analyses are influenced by propaganda in the media and cyberspace rather than stemming from the truth, the solutions that are offered will go astray. 
Street riots began in Iran following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in late September, later spilling into universities which has continued for several weeks now. 
Tehran blames western countries for provoking and fueling the turmoil and encouraging violence. 
Raisi said the first and most important way to restore peace and order in universities is to elaborate on the course of events and address obscurities in the minds of students and professors. 
“The enemies want universities to be a place for unrest, disturbance and unethicality. We must strongly stand against the enemies’ wish with the help of insightful professors and students and defeat them,” he said. 

War of Narrations 

He stressed the need to present a correct and honest account of the happenings, reiterating that today’s war is the war of narrations. 
“The enemies had tried hard to stop the scientific, industrial, manufacturing and service-providing activities of the country and sever Iran’s relations with other countries, and once they failed in practice, they began to plot and cause trouble,” he said. 
Raisi later gave examples of the country’s areas of progress that have marked the failure of hostile countries. 
“The enemy announced that it would try to reduce Iran’s oil sale to zero while at the moment, the country’s oil export has reached near the amount before sanctions,” he said. 
The United States reimposed tough sanctions, including on Iran’s oil sector, following its unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal in 2018. American officials announced that they would try to isolate Iran as part of their so-called maximum pressure campaign. 
“Despite enemies’ efforts to isolate the country, Iran’s relations with its neighbors and regional countries are expanding,” the president said. 
The up to five-fold growth in foreign trade, improvement of trade balance, increase in Iran’s share of the region’s transit, economy, science and technology were among other advancements that Raisi underlined. 
Highlighting shortcomings in addressing the questions and ambiguities of academics and certain other strata, he called on universities to put clarification about the country’s progress on top of their agenda. 
It is also essential for universities to have a political atmosphere, according to Raisi. 
“Being political means that universities must understand the requirements of the country more and better than any other sector and adjust their priorities in a manner that they can serve the people,” he said. 
Before the president’s speech, a number of chancellors expressed their ideas and views.