Speech [Need for self-assurance and using economic sanctions to promote self-sufficiency]

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

The biggest blow that we suffered at the hands of the big powers was the blow to our identity. All their efforts were focused on alienating us from our own Iranian-Islamic identity and replacing it with an identity dependent upon the East, the West, or the European world. The corrupt upbringing that had become prevalent in the previous regime and was growing stronger by the day attempted to create grounds for making our children reliant upon outsiders right from kindergarten on to high school and further. During that phase in which Iran had succumbed to this trend it was infected with the belief that" we are not capable of anything". We either have to import everything from abroad or then we need their support. Even if we have to operate upon an appendix we either need to call for a surgeon from abroad or then we have to send our patient outside the country! You all saw how during Muhammad Rida's times even for very ordinary problems like an appendix operation or something similar, a foreign doctor needed to be summoned. For someone who claimed to be the leader of this nation and who wished to convert it into a great civilization and for the aggrandizement of whom so much propaganda was done, such an attitude was bound to be a national disaster both internally and externally. The message that it would give to the foreigners was that if we had a specialist doctor for such problems in our own country we would not have needed someone from outside. Internally, such acts resulted in discrediting our own doctors and physicians. It is obvious that it was not the man's fond attachment for his family member that prompted him to make this move. It was in fact a calculated act aimed at stripping this country of its self-assurance. Even if a road or a highway needed to be asphalted, they would depend upon foreign experts to come and do the job. This was not because we lacked experts but it was because the aim was to ignore the core issue. The basic aim was to inculcate the belief that we are incapable and incompetent and that we needed to import everything from abroad including the asphalt for building our roads! Great amounts were spent for this purpose but what was of real concern was that it was being inculcated into the minds of the masses that we are incapable of handling even such small matters without the help of foreign experts. And this was part of the agenda. They wanted all our Iranian brains to become dependent on foreigners. Even our doctors were expected to lose their self-assurance with a fear of incapability and to depend upon foreign hands for everything.

You all saw during the imposed war and because of the economic sanctions imposed upon us, how the Iranians and our army personnel managed to manufacture all the needed spare parts. In the earlier days they could not even produce one of these parts simply because they had lost their self-assurance and were made to believe that we need to bring in foreign experts for everything.

It is my conviction that if we can only persist through ten to fifteen years of economic sanction, we will succeed in regaining our lost confidence and all the minds that had earlier become stagnant and inactive will become active again. It is only natural that if someone gets used to being spoon-fed he loses his ability to think and cannot even perform simple jobs to earn his living. If someone is used to being served his breakfast, lunch, and dinner effortlessly and if all his needs are taken care of by others, he then turns into a vegetable and gets paralyzed. What they wanted was to create vegetables in this country. Extensive propaganda and stifling efforts were made to make us believe that we are good-for-nothings and are incapable of anything. On the other hand, the plans were to import everything, including expertise, from abroad. Whenever any nation finds that all its needs are managed by foreign sources it does not even bother to take an independent step.

It is only when our nation realizes that if it does not take its agriculture, its petroleum industry, and its manufacturing industry seriously, it is bound to perish helplessly and it is only when it recognizes that it has to take its reins in its own hands since no one else is going to care about its well being will our local brains get active again and will we start producing experts in all areas and find capable hands to handle all kinds of jobs. Our agriculture will begin to flourish with our own efforts and we will be running our own factories.

We can already see how our people have started running our own factories. We can also see this on television along with their innovations. These innovations are thanks to the economic sanctions. If all our needs were catered through foreign hands our youth would never have stood up on their own feet. They would never have bothered to do anything constructive because they were being spoon-fed. I believe that this economic sanction which many people dread is like a gift to our nation because it means that we will no longer be spoon-fed. And it is only when this spoon-feeding stops that we will learn to get up and work for our own selves. It is quite likely that we will have to work hard for about ten years and may even have to face various hardships. But the final outcome will be that at the end of those ten years we will emerge self-reliant and will no longer need to stretch our hands out for the help of this and that nation or institute. The problem is that in the previous regime they had operated in a manner that had trained us and our youth to see themselves as completely incapable and had turned us into mere consumers who even took pride in the fact! Some people even went to the extent of saying: `What's wrong in this! The others are our servants and provide for our needs. ' Least did they realize that these people had in fact turned into their masters. They carried off everything that belonged to you with the pretext of catering to your needs!

It is vital that we realize that no one is going to provide anything for us and only we have to learn to cater to our own needs. If only our farmers realize and believe that nothing is going to reach us from outside, they will start working for themselves. The nation will start working for itself. I had once heard that in the earlier days, the Chinese planted wheat even on their rooftops, besides their fields and backyards. If a nation wishes to become self-reliant and independent in every area, it simply has to discard the thought of importing everything from abroad. It has to inculcate the idea of becoming independent of the need to import from abroad. And even if we lack something, we will forego the need for it until we can manufacture it domestically. Even if we find that we cannot presently manage to set up a certain industry, we should not depend upon foreign help. We should pursue the matter on our own strength until we gain success which is bound to come eventually. There is absolutely no difference between" Iranian brains" and" European brains" except that they were brought up in one manner and we were brought up in another manner. We were brought up to be lazy. Fine! But for how much longer are we going to tolerate the idea of being a lazy lot that is completely dependent on other lords and masters to provide for its bread, its meat, and to even administer its offices and its army. There has to be an end to this. A human being cannot remain a parasite forever.

What is important is that we believe in ourselves and our capabilities. Before anything else, it is necessary to have faith in oneself and in one's ability. Once this belief is firm, we can become determined. And when this determination emerges in a nation, everyone gets up and starts working. In any case, we need to get all negative beliefs out of our minds and our writers, our orators, and our public authorities should strive to inculcate self-assurance within our peoples; in the same manner that they inculcated the belief in the Eastern minds in the past few centuries through their propaganda that unless we rely upon the West or the North, we will not be able to do anything. This was simply a belief that even our writers and orators of those times endorsed. Some people, even if it was without any malice, believed that this is how it should be. Even today, there are many who believe out of goodwill that we should link up with them in some way or the other. And yet, there were other mercenaries who spread this belief. Today, notwithstanding all the negative propaganda, a nation has been formed beyond everyone's imagination and in spite of the fact that many believed that it would not be possible for a small and dependent nation to withstand and eliminate America with all its might and its prime position in the world. I had not come across a single person who believed that such a thing could be possible. They would either remain silent or would call it an impossible thing to achieve.

Well, you all saw that once a nation became determined everything became possible! When a nation is determined to achieve something, it is bound to succeed. They are once again attempting to surface this belief that we are incapable and that we lack the necessary expertise and that we lack the know-how. All those countries that ultimately succeeded, like Japan, started from scratch and labored hard and are now able to compete with America. America is a market for many Japanese products today. They did succeed in making the impossible possible. Another example is India which has advanced today because it adopted a belief in self-reliance