Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei urged President Hassan Rouhani to honor the pledges he made during the election campaign season last month, and build a resilient economy.
"As per the constitution, the president has immense power at his disposal, and this power should be exploited to develop potentialities. There should be no hesitation in honoring the promises made to the people," his official website quoted him as saying.
Ayatollah Khamenei was speaking on Sunday to a large public gathering at the mausoleum of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in southern Tehran, marking the 1989 demise of the father of the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Rouhani won a second term in the May 19 elections with 23 million plus votes out of the total 41 million ballots cast. On the campaign trail the incumbent vowed, among other things, to boost the economy by attracting foreign investment and improve the quality of the life of the masses, especially those at the lower-end of the economic ladder.
The Leader reiterated his stance and advised the government to place a high priority on strengthening domestic production and create jobs for army of unemployed, in line with Resistance Economy goals.
"Americans are brazenly hatching new plots against Iran every day. Officials must fully prepare the country against [those ploys] from every political and economic standpoint", he said.
The Leader first proposed the Resistance Economy concept in 2011 to reduce the country's overreliance on oil revenues, amid the tightening of sanctions imposed by the US and its allies over unproven allegations that Tehran was secretly developing atomic weapon under the guise of its nuclear energy program.
US Antagonism
Despite the settlement of the nuclear dispute between Iran and western powers as outlined in the July 2015 agreement with the six powers, the US administration under Donald Trump has taken a highly antagonistic stance against Tehran and has revived a nearly forgotten US mantra that "all options are on the table" regarding Iran, including the military one.
"The US president performs a sword dance with the chieftain of a tribal, backward and sheer decadent establishment while rudely finding fault with the Iranian nation's free elections and the forty million who voted," the Leader said, pointing to a visit by the controversial US leader to Riyadh.
"With utmost shamelessness, our enemies speak of human rights while standing next to those behind the massacre of the Yemeni people and impose sanctions against the dignified Iranian nation in the name of human rights. How much more insolent can they really get?"
During the trip, in which Saudis agreed to buy over $110 billion worth of US weaponry, Trump and Saudi King Salman took turns to vilify Iran as the "world's top sponsor of terrorism."
Media speculations are rife that the US, Saudi Arabia and their allies are struggling to form an anti-Iran alliance to curb what they claim is its growing influence in the strategic region.
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