The members of the High Council of the Commanders of the IRGC met with the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces— Ayatollah Khamenei— on October 2, 2019.
In this meeting, the Supreme Leader stressed that the policies of the United States to pressure Iran have miscarried and said: The Americans failed in their Maximum Pressure policy. They assumed if they apply the policy of Maximum Pressure on Iran, Iran would accept to compromise with them. To this moment, by God’s grace and power, they learned Maximum Pressure only afflicted themselves with problems.
Referring to the U.S.'s direct and indirect requests of meeting with the President of the Islamic Republic on the sidelines of the UNGA, Ayatollah Khamenei maintained: Till just recently, to form a symbolic show of Iran’s surrender, and to make the Iranian president to meet with them, they even started to beseech us, and used their European friends as a mediator. They failed so far, and this policy will fail forever.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution went on to point to the international issues and said: "If we look closely at the developments in the region and the world, we will see that the more the enemies spend, the more they will lose."
Ayatollah Khamenei referred to the costs the enemies, especially the U.S., have endured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, and reminded his audience: They created ISIS at enormous costs and provided them with weapons, financial and propaganda support, and now that with the help of Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian youth ISIS is done with, they lie, saying they destroyed ISIS!
He added: "The U.S. president acknowledged spending $7 trillion in the region while achieving nothing but loss and defeat, and the same will be true in the future."
His Eminence made it clear that Iran will continue to reduce the implementation of its commitment within the nuclear deal, and asserted: Concerning the JCPOA, we will seriously continue to reduce our commitments; the [Iranian] Atomic Energy Organization is responsible here, and should carefully and completely enact all the reduction of commitments that the Islamic Republic has declared, until we reach the desired results. We will surely achieve our desired goals, by God’s grace.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution elaborated on Iran’s growing domestic capabilities to overcome economic challenges and said: In the face of hostility to our economy, we sought and found remedies in the light of domestic capabilities. As you can view now, some had previously predicted that the year 2019 will be a bad year in terms of economic problems, nevertheless, now the officials in the country are saying that we have had some slight economic growth in this year.
His Eminence went in to assert: Of course, people have difficulties in their livelihoods, but if the authorities continue to act strongly, reasonably and persistently, it will surely have a gradual impact on people's lives and livelihoods.
At the end of the meeting, tapping on the challenges facing Iran’s oil sale due to illegal sanctions imposed on the country, Imam Khamenei maintained: The sanctions imposed on oil sales, which is increasingly focused on by the Maximum Pressure policy, is a short-term problem for the country because, in the long run, it has the benefit of breaking the reliance on oil revenues. This tactical pressure helps us strategically.