Academia Urged to Help Tackle Economic Woes

Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has called on university instructors to help policy and decision makers in the government find out why plans to revive the economy are not producing results, particularly efforts at resilience in the face of economic wars by hostile powers.

"Everyone approves the Resistance Economy and commissions and committees have been set up for it. But there is no progress and this shows that there is a scientific complication, the detection and settlement of which is the function of academia," his said, according to a translation of his remarks posted on his official website.

Ayatollah Khamenei was speaking in a meeting with a group of academics, researchers and elites late on Wednesday.  

The Resistance Economy seeks to curb the country's overreliance on oil export revenues, improve productivity and reduce the government's role in the economy.

The concept was first broached by the Leader in 2011, amid the tightening of international sanctions over allegations that Tehran was secretly trying to develop atomic weapons.

The Leader also urged the university teachers to help address other economic challenges, including the failure of efforts to create jobs in the current and previous administrations, lack of tangible progress in the execution of Article 44 (on privatization of state-run companies aimed at moving toward a market-driven economy), the problems facing the banking sector and the conundrum that the vast money supply is not at the service of local production and progress, as well as the lack of progress in attaining social justice goals.

  Greater Cause

The Leader also pointed to the International Quds Day, which was marked on Friday, describing it as a very important day that is not merely meant for supporting an oppressed nation, but is a symbol of fighting hegemonic powers.  

"The commemoration of Quds Day does not merely mean defending an oppressed people that have been driven out of their motherland and homes, but defending Palestine today is defending a truth much greater than the issue of Palestine."

"Today, fighting the Zionist regime is fighting arrogance and the hegemonic order and this is why US politicians feel bitter by and hostility toward this move".

The Quds Day is held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan during which demonstrators in many countries march against decades-long Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories and express their solidarity with the oppressed nation.

The day was named by the late founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, following the victory of the Islamic Revolution that toppled US-backed monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.