SARI, Mazandaran Province Chairman of the Expediency Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, extolled Iran's defensive power, saying, "Iran enjoys such defenses and manpower as to make it too costly for any superpower." "During the Iraqi-imposed war, although sanctions were imposed on us, we managed to manufacture weapons that could not be found in any developed state," he told a gathering to commemorate the 1300 martyrs of this northern city.
"Global arrogance (an allusion to the United States) imposed an 8-year-long war on Iran aiming to push its elite revolutionaries into disparaging the 1,400-year Islam," he said, adding that after the Islamic Revolution in 1979 "both the former Soviet Union and the Westerners who were dissatisfied with the revival of Islam joined hands to repress the revolution and, for this purpose, imposed a war." Rafsanjani scoffed at the enemies who daydreamed of seeing Iran collapse as a result of the imposed war, adding that on the contrary Iran emerged triumphant in the conflict.
He seized the moment to name a number of projects whose foundations, he said, were laid during the reconstruction period and, logically, during his eight-year tenure as president.
Elsewhere, addressing a gathering of provincial clerics, Rafsanjani said: "Seminaries should modernize their knowledge." He warned that if clerics are content with the current state of their knowledge, they would fail.
"Twenty years since the Islamic Revolution, there are remaining concerns that should not scare us, but rather force us to find a solution," he said.
He also praised the clerics and clerical regime in Iran, saying, "For the first time since the advent of Islam clerics are running our country. The door was opened by (the late Founder of the Islamic Republic) Imam Khomeini." (IRNA)