Supreme Leader Underlines Need for IRGC’s Possession of Advanced Weapons

“Today, the IRGC is dignified both inside and outside the country, thanks be to God. The enemies have contributed to creating this dignity. With violent, aggressive and hostile behavior, the Americans increased the dignity of the IRGC. The enemies of God show hostility to God’s servants, and this hostility makes God’s servants more reputable and estimable,” Ayatollah Khamenei said, addressing the graduation ceremony for the cadets at Imam Hussain (AS) Academy in Tehran on Sunday.

“A permanent lesson before the eyes of the IRGC is the Quranic verse: Mobilize your (defensive) force as much as you can to frighten the enemies of God and your own enemies (the Quran; 8:60). Investigate to find out what you need in all military and intelligence arenas. During the tyrannical Pahlavi regime, we were dependent, backward and unknowledgeable in terms of military equipment,” he added.

“The military equipment of the IRGC must be advanced and up-to-date; you should invent and manufacture them yourselves,” Ayatollah Khamenei underscored.

Elsewhere, he referred to the Arbaeen walk, the largest religious gatherings in the world, which comes 40 days after Ashura, the martyrdom anniversary of the third Shiite Imam, Imam Hossein (AS), and said, “The importance of Arbaeen since its beginning was as much as today. The first Arbaeen was the powerful media of Ashura. Those forty days were the days when the logic of Truth reigned among the dark world of Bani-Umayyahs and Bani-Sofyanis. Ahlulbait shaped an upheaval in a forty-day movement.”

“Today, too, Arbaeen walk is an eloquent voice and an unprecedented media in the complex and propagandized world. It is unprecedented in the world to see a huge crowd move toward that source (Imam Hussain’s Shrine). You rightly said that Hussein (AS) brings us together. This movement should increasingly expand and deepen.”

Huge numbers of Iranian Muslim pilgrims are walking towards the holy city of Karbala for the annual Arabaeen mourning ceremonies despite attempts to magnify security concerns after the recent unrests in Iraq.

Each year, millions of Shiites flock to Karbala, where the holy shrine of Imam Hussein (AS) is located, to perform mourning rites. Many of them also visit Imam Ali’s (AS) holy shrine in Najaf.

In the past few years, around 20 million pilgrims from all over the world, including Iran, have taken part in the mourning ceremonies in the Iraqi holy cities marking Arbaeen.

Unofficial reports say that the number of Iranians applying for a visa to go on the pilgrimage has, at least, tripled so far. The unrests in a number of Iraqi cities is suspected by Iranians to have spiraled by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia to deter the Iranian people’s Arbaeen pilgrimage and Iranian pilgrims intend to show that they are undeterred.

Imam Hossein (PBUH) was martyred in the 680 A.D. battle fought on the plains outside Karbala, a city in modern Iraq that’s home to the Imam’s holy shrine.

In the battle, Imam Hossein (PBUH) was decapitated and his body mutilated by Yazid’s armies. All of Imam Hossein’s male family members, relatives, friends, soldiers who all together formed a 72-member army were beheaded in an unequal war with a 30,000-strong army of the enemy in the desert of Karbala.

The occasion is the source of an enduring moral lesson for the Shiites.

Imam Hossein’s martyrdom – recounted through a rich body of prose, poetry and song – remains an inspirational example of sacrifice to Shiites, who make up a majority of the Muslim population in Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Bahrain.

This year’s Arbaeen ceremonies are held amid the western and Arab media’s negative propaganda and exaggeration of the recent unrests in Iraq to dissuade the pilgrims from traveling to the country but the bordering areas of Iran near Iraq are full of eager pilgrims trying to arrive in Karbala for Arbaeen ceremonies.

Iraqi officials announced earlier this week that calm has been restored in all regions.