Speech [Half a century of crime; small groups blocking Iran's development]

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

I would like to first apologize to you gentlemen, who in this scorching weather are standing in such a small place under the sun. I am sorry to see sweat on your faces and I humbly pray that Almighty God may bestow upon you all the best of health, success, dignity and greatness. We are indebted to the efforts of the nation as a whole as well the people of Azerbaijan. The province of Azerbaijan has always been in the forefront in the defense of the Islam and the nation. This must also prove true now. Conspiracies can be found everywhere, and there may even be more conspiracies in the province of Azerbaijan. You valiant young men are duty bound to neutralize these conspiracies. Of course, these plots are not of much importance, and the perpetrators are trying in vain to push us back into the hands of the previous masters. Nonetheless, we must maintain our vigilance and keep the enemies at bay, no matter how weak they are, in order to be able to neutralize their schemes.

Today this country, through the painstaking efforts of all the esteemed people, men and women, is under your own control. The hands of the oppressors, the autocrats, the dictators, the foreigners, and the plunderers have all been cut off. Now you and I may freely get together in one place. The police, other brothers, and sisters can all sit together and talk about our troubles. We have a lot to talk about. We have been through some very excruciating pains in these past fifty odd years. Our nation has been traumatized by so many agonies that can be found in no history book. I have been witness to all this ever since the rule of the Rida Khan (Muhammad- Rida Pahlavi's father). There may be a few among you who could recall those days. I was witness to all those pains inflicted by the dirty hands of this man on the Iranian nation. I remember the sacrilegious insults against the sacred beliefs of this nation and Islam. We were witness to the cruelties he (Rida Khan) perpetrated, in particular against the honorable ladies, and the clergy. We were witness to his sending two great clerics of Azerbaijan, the late Haj Mir Sadiq Aqa and the late Angaji into exile. I do not exactly remember whether it was Saqqiz (a town in the Iranian province of Kurdistan) or not. We also saw how the scholars of Khorasan were arrested all together and were brought to Tehran to be imprisoned. We witnessed when the great scholars of Isfahan rose against that traitor and staged a sit-in in the city of Qum to oppose that oppressor; they were arrested and sent into exile along with the scholars of many other provinces. However, the power was in that treacherous man's hands and he was able to suppress these people's uprising and did not let them succeed. I was witness to the troubles made for the clergy during the reign of Rida Khan and dire consequences afterward. I was both a witness and a victim of those troubles. Now you and I both have been witness to the acts of treason and murderous crimes of his son, who has perpetrated worse crimes than his father. You, as a nation, were witness to all these catastrophic treacherous acts and crimes. It was through the will of the Almighty God when you courageously rose and put into effect an all-out revolution in the name of the Almighty God. If an uprising is intended to please God and Islam and for the sake of religion, there is never room for the term defeat. Your achievements came through this very unity of expression and love for the Divine and Almighty God. It was your demand for the establishment of an Islamic republic that led the movement to this very point and, you must from now on endeavor to safeguard it.

We have not so far been able to make our all wishes come true. It is true; some of our wishes have come true. These wishes were all valuable and blissfully great. The fall of the totalitarian monarchist regime and our disassociating ourselves with the deposed regime, apostate allies were the greatest achievements that were unprecedented in the history. Nobody could even imagine an achievement of this magnitude. Now, we have come so far and to this critical juncture. Should some traitors come along and ask, so what? Your answer is as simple as" what else greater than the fact that we cut off the hands of your masters and threw out the traitors. All the same, this is not good enough. We have to move forward. We must build a developed Iran and an independently free country, in which every citizen lives in comfort. This is the kind of Iran we have in mind, but these remaining and festering wounds are in our way.

Agents of the foreign countries are still in Iran. They are in your Azerbaijan province, in Kurdistan and in Tehran, everywhere and under different names but following the same policies. They have been assigned to prevent the country from finding peace and our farmers from doing their business. They are after creating disruptions in factories. How can you identify these traitors, who are working under various labels? If you wish to identify these groups, it is simple. They are trying hard to prevent agricultural activities, which is a symptom displayed by traitors. They are trying to bring the country's factories to a standstill. The production of these factories benefits our people, being against it is again a clear sign of their treachery. These people are working for the foreign countries, single-mindedly at work to stop our universities from continuing their activities. These latter acts of mischief, of course, are more indications of their insincerity. They want to stage useless demonstrations and make our people follow them in their treacherous acts. They stage these demonstrations when our people themselves and the nation's statesmen are against such demonstrations. This is how a traitor works. Make sure you drive them away from yourselves.

I pray to the Almighty God to bestow health and success to all of you, my brothers, my children, and my sisters. I should remain as a soldier and a servant to everybody in this country.

May God's peace, mercy, and blessings be upon you.