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Iran brings in New Year by focusing on domestic production

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stressed the need to focus on domestic production in the upcoming year.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks live on television after casting his ballot in the Iranian presidential election in Tehran June 12, 2009. REUTERS/Caren Firouz/File Photo - S1AETHSUNEAA

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared the upcoming Iranian New Year “Pickup in Production.” This means at the very least that future speeches and slogans will have a heightened focus on the state of the economy, which is currently struggling in part due to US sanctions that were reimposed after the Donald Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal signed between Iran and six world powers in 2015.

“We put behind us an adventurous year,” Khamenei said in a video message aired on Iranian state television March 21, adding that "the enemy had plans for Iran, [but] the strength and wisdom of the people and the efforts of the youth neutralized the plans of the enemy.” Khamenei said, “Against severe sanctions that in their own words were unprecedented, the Iranian nation both in the political field and the economic field showed a strong and powerful reaction.”

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