Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said on Saturday US economic pressure is meant to cause a rift between the people and the ruling establishment, calling for vigilance and unity to thwart enemy plots.
"The enemy's plan is to separate the people from the (Islamic Republic) system and this plot shows their inanity because they do not know that the system is nothing but the Iranian nation and the two cannot be separated," the Leader said at a graduation ceremony for cadets at Tehran's Imam Hossein University, his official website reported.
The United States is stepping up pressure on Iran because it wants to see the nation run out of patience but the bond between the people and the system will become stronger in the face of such attempts, he added.
The administration of US President Donald Trump, who pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal with world powers in May, has threatened to impose "the strongest sanctions in history" against Tehran. It has also demanded sweeping changes in Iran’s foreign, military and nuclear policies.
Heavier Price
Ayatollah Khamenei said the cost of yielding to demands of hostile powers is much higher than putting up resistance and urged officials to exercise prudence and help boost national unity to disappoint ill-wishers.
The fact that Washington has not been able to halt the progress of the Iranian nation in various areas after the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution is proof of the country’s powerful status on the world stage, he noted.
Regional Coalitions
The Leader added that one sign of Iran’s clout is the regional coalitions that the Americans have been trying to forge against it.
“If the US had been able to achieve its objectives on its own, it would not need coalitions with disgraced and reactionary regimes in the region,” he said, in an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia, a junior ally of Washington.
Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran’s power comes from the people behind it, not from military prowess or material wealth.
“National power does not lie in giving a nation’s money to another country to buy weapons. It is not to drag one country from across the world to another place to open a hub for supporting a regime sucking people’s blood. This is not national power. It is imprudence and humiliation.”
Elaborating the point, the Leader said, “Due to the strength and progress of the Islamic Republic system, US hostility has increased and the Iranian people’s revulsion toward the US has been increasing day by day.”
US presidents before Trump had also tried to confront Iran but failed in their efforts, Ayatollah Khamenei recalled, adding that the country will soon reach a point where no one would dare threaten it with economic sanctions or military action.
