Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb.19
By Fatih Karimov - Trend: Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has given general outlines for a "Resistance Economy", with a main theme of supporting domestic production relying on national resources.
The leader emphasized improving economic productivity, supporting job creation plans, and enhancing social welfare indices.
He has also highlighted the need for reforming the national financial system, increasing non-oil exports, implementing the subsidy reform plan, improving consumption patterns, and securing sufficient sources for food and drug imports.
For more than a year, Iran has operated under the ideology of the "Resistance Economy", a concept declared by the Supreme Leader in an August 2012 speech.
In that speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to adopt what he termed a "Resistance Economy", laying out twelve key "Resistance Economy" principles, including that Iran's production should be developed and increased, and that Iranians must be persuaded to shun foreign imports in favor of domestically-made goods.
According to Khamenei, the "Resistance Economy" would promote economic self-reliance, a strategy that would defeat the efforts of the U.S.-led West to defeat Iran via economic and trade sanctions. It would thus ensure Iran's continued defiance of the West, and the progress of its 1979 Islamic Revolution, by harnessing Iran's "full potential". Beyond the economy, it would "break the illusions" of the U.S. that increasingly harsh sanctions would force Tehran to capitulate over its nuclear program.
The ideology of the "Resistance Economy", with its core concepts of self-sufficiency and even sacrifice, proclaims that Islamic Republic can survive - and indeed flourish - despite U.S.-led sanctions.