Khamenehi also appeared to repudiate talk that Iran might initiate a pre-emptive war to forestall any military attack on the Islamic Republic.
The Islamic Republic had long said it would not initiate hostilities with any country—until last month. Then, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hejazi, a Pasdar officer who is the Number Two ranking officer in the Iranian military as deputy commander of the Joint Staff of the armed forces, reversed the policy by announcing a new policy of pre-emptive war.
Hejazi said, “Our strategy now is that, if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s interests and want to decide to do that, we will act without waiting for their actions.”
Since Iran has long said its enemies want to hurt Iran’s interests, that laid out the justification for an attack on some other country at any time of Iran’s choosing.
Iran’s ambassador to Moscow said the day after Hejazi spoke that Iran had no such pre-emptive attack policy. And most analysts considered that Hejazi was just mouthing hollow rhetoric. But no one in authority above Hejazi contradicted Hejazi for four weeks until Khamenehi spoke out.
Khamenehi never mentioned Hejazi and did not indicate he was clarifying Iran’s policy. He just plunked his discussion of pre-emptive war down in the middle of a speech on Now Ruz.
“We do not have nuclear weapons. And we do not intend to produce them,” Khamenehi said. “But in the face of aggression, by either the United States or the Zionist regime, we will attack them at the same level they attack us.”
The implication was that if the United States bombed the Natanz nuclear center, the Islamic Republic would in turn bomb the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, nuclear center or some similar site. The threat was not credible.
But Khamenehi spoke only of attacking the United States or Israel in response for an attack by the United States or Israel. He did not speak of a pre-emptive attack, as Hejazi had done.
But some analysts noted that while Khamenehi spoke only in terms of retaliation, he never specifically ruled out a pre-emptive attack.
Khamenehi repeated his standard theme that the United States is not in a confrontation with Iran because of its nuclear program but because Iran refuses to bow to the Americans. “If Iran was ready to surrender to them like certain countries in the region, they would not have any hostility toward Iran,” he said.
Khamenehi also that the Qoran guarantees that Iran will win if the Americans or Israelis ever start a war against Iran. “The holy Qoran has given us the glad tidings that if the atheists attack you, they will fail,” he said. “No where does the Qoran say that if you start a war you will definitely win…. But the Qoran has promised that if an enemy starts a war against you [Muslims], that enemy will certainly fail…. This is divine law.”
Khamenehi also called the American people “racists,” an unusual departure from his usual practice of condemning American society and government, but not the American people. Khamenehi said that in 2008, American voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama for president because he promised to bring change. “Otherwise,” Khamen-ehi said, “the racist people would not have been willing to vote for a black man.”
Khamenehi also dismissed Americans for not voting, saying 64 percent of Iranians voted in the Majlis elections March 2 while the proportion of Americans voting in congressional elections was 35 percent and had not reached 40 percent in the last 10 years. His numbers were reasonably accurate. Since 1971, when the US voting age was dropped to 18, the turnout for congressional elections (not presidential elections) has always been in the range of 36.4 percent to 39.8 percent.
Khamenehi said the goal of the United States was to put a puppet ruler in command of Iran, as the Americans have already done in other oil states in the region. Neighboring states, he said, “have a lot of oil resources, but they are in the hands of the Americans. They are told how much to produce and at what price to sell their oil. And they obey. They are told where to sell and where not to sell their oil. And they obey.”
