PHOTO: Supreme Leader addresses military commanders on Sunday “You should be strengthened every day”
Upholding his message of defiance of the West — and of the Rouhani Government’s foreign policy of engagement — Iran’s Supreme Leader addressed senior military commanders on Sunday.
Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated his declaration that “the armed forces should be strengthened day by day”, heralding them as the only military “in the world that has a spiritual motivation, efficiency, and political independence”.
He then turned to the US, proclaiming that its performance Afghanistan and Iraq is the clear example of armies with only a militaristic nature”. And he took a swing at Saudi Arabia, saying its “decorative” military was “achieving nothing” with its intervention in Yemen.
Khamenei linked the recent past of the US with current conflicts by claiming that some countries “don’t hesitate to employ criminal forces such as Blackwater”, the private contractors used by Washington in its occupation of Iraq from 2003.
Among those in the audience was General Qassemi Soleimani, the head of the elite Qods Force, heralded as a hero because of his role in military interventions in Iraq and Syria.
