On Wednesday, the Iranian regime’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei delivered a speech on the occasion of the regime’s so-called “labor week” and, while he admitted that the country suffers from “plenty of labor and economic problems,” he said, “Progress in our arms industry has surprised our enemies. Amidst sanctions, can Iran has been able to create advanced weapons at this scale? Yes it can! It can do more than this! Better than this! More advanced than this!”
Khamenei tried to exude power and dismiss his regime’s increasing isolation by saying, “They want to put pressure on the Islamic State with sanctions and force it to surrender to their bullying and power-seeking demands.”
Khamenei also responded to complaints from regime insiders who, fearing the explosive state of society and the bankrupt economy, are warning against the continued warmongering of the regime in the region. Khamenei said. “Some make good-intentioned recommendations to compromise with the U.S. Hear this: there will be no end to their expectations. The state will never surrender to such bullying.”
Khamenei therefore proved once again that preserving the regime and preventing protests and uprisings through domestic repression and regional terrorism is his sole modus operandi. This is the extension of Khomeini’s strategy to extend the war against Iraq in the 1980s. Khomeini explicitly stated that preserving the regime is the highest priority, continued the war on Iran’s neighbor for six years after Iraq had withdrawn from occupied territories and the people of Iran were demanding a peace treaty and an end to the war. Khomeini stressed that he would continue the war to the last house in Tehran. Only after the PMOI and the National Liberation Army (NLA) defeated his war machine did Khomeini agreed to a ceasefire agreement, which he described as “drinking from the chalice of poison.”
Now, Khamenei is following Khomeini’s example and sees his regime’s survival in continuing to wage war in the region and suppress the people of Iran inside the country. Therefore, he is insisting on creating “advanced weapons” and atomic bombs even at the cost of destroying the economy and the lives of the people of Iran. He does not care that the people of Iran are paying the price of the regime’s expensive intervention in the region and its nuclear weapons program. He does not care that more than 60 million of Iran’s 85-million population is under the poverty line. He doesn’t care that his warmongering has destroyed the lives of millions of people in the region. Instead, he is bragging about his regime’s weapons-building capabilities.
Khamenei is so delusional that in the same speech, he boasts about building weapons while egregiously ignoring the abysmal conditions of millions of workers by speaking about the “key role of the labor community in the production leap and the improvement of the country’s economy,” disregarding the continued protests of Iranian workers in cities across the country and the destructive role of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in seizing and destroying the country’s economy.
At the beginning of the new Persian calendar year, which began on March 20, the regime declared that it will be increasing the minimum wage by 35 percent while according to the regime’s own Central Bank, the inflation is at 43 percent. However, some regime experts are saying that the inflation is in triple digits, especially in foods. The widening gap between income and inflation and skyrocketing prices is a disaster that is worsening by the year, affecting the workers and the impoverished segments of the society more than others.
