Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has said that one key lesson for future administrations to learn from the experience gained during the tenure of outgoing President Hassan Rouhani is that there is no benefit in putting one's trust in the West.
Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks during his last official meeting with President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet members on Wednesday.
“The others should use your experience,” Ayatollah Khamenei told the meeting. “There is a specific experience... that I have noted to you and the people many times before, and let me repeat the same thing here, which is [the need for] a lack of trust in the West.”
“This is an experience that the posterity should use. As it became manifest during the tenure of this administration, nothing can be gained from putting one's trust in the West,” the Leader said.
President-elect Ebrahim Raeisi’s swearing-in ceremony will be held on August 5. Raeisi won the June 18 presidential election in a landslide, garnering over 18 million votes.
The Leader added that domestic programs should in no way be tied to Western states under any circumstances due to the proven failure of such an approach.
“Wherever you tied your work to the West, you failed, and wherever you rose and moved forward without trusting the West, you succeeded,” he said in an address to members of the outgoing administration.
“Wherever you tied issues to an agreement or talks with the West, America and the like, you failed to move forward,” he said. “Because they don’t help. They are the enemies, of course.”
Making a reference to the ongoing talks in Vienna, Austria, to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Ayatollah Khamenei acknowledged the endeavors made by Iranian diplomats, saying, however, that the Americans insisted on their hostile stance against Iran and did not move even one step forward during the talks.
So far, six rounds of negotiations have been held in Vienna, three years after the US unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal, officially called the JCPOA, and brandished what it called the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
“The Americans say [in words] and promise that ‘we will remove the sanctions’ but they have failed to do so,” said the Leader, denouncing the US attempts to add new terms to the agreement to push Iran to begin talks on other issues.
By adding such a clause, according to the Leader, the Americans are seeking to gain an excuse for further meddlesome acts regarding the JCPOA, Iran’s missile program and regional issues
“And if Iran refuses to talk about [those issues], they would say ‘you have violated the JCPOA and therefore there won't be an agreement anymore,’” he added.
Ayatollah Khamenei drew attention to the fact that the US has refused to provide Iran with a guarantee that it will not violate its commitments again.
He noted that Washington will not shy away from violating its contractual commitments in the same manner it did in 2018, a move that was “completely costless” for them.