President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed that the country’s inflation would be harnessed and the corrupt agents of foreigners in Iran’s national economy confronted this year.
Addressing a public gathering in Qom on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad said certain people were trying to support the enemy, cause sedition and create obstacles to cripple Iran’s democratic government.
“In the face of propaganda campaigns launched by the enemies, these people did not resist; instead they put psychological pressure on the government,“ he said, noting that these people have explicitly announced that they control the country’s financial and oil resources.
The president also said they assumed that the enemies would issue resolutions against Iran and sever financial transactions, preparing the ground for putting further pressure on Iran’s economy.
“By the grace of God and thanks to the lofty guidelines of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, their efforts have been neutralized. They assumed that Iran’s economy had become very weak and vulnerable following the UN Security Council resolutions,“ he said.
Ahmadinejad said contrary to their plot to raise inflation rate to 70 percent, it has been reduced by 18 percent and will be further controlled this year.
Referring to foreign issues, the president said Iranians favor logical and fair negotiations away from the current approach of bullying powers.
“Any negotiation should be based on justice and preserve the basic interests and rights of nations,“ he said.
Ahmadinejad also expressed doubt about the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US, describing the strike as “a suspect event“.
“Four or five years ago, a suspect event took place in New York. A building collapsed and they said 3,000 people had been killed, whose names were never published,“ he said during the speech broadcast live on state television.
“Under this pretext, they attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, and since then a million people have been killed,“ he said.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on Wednesday met with a group of army commanders in Tehran on the eve of Army Day.
The leader said the army is duty-bound to protect the country against possible attacks, stressing that they should always be in a state of readiness, IRNA reported.
Ayatollah Khamenei congratulated the army personnel and nation on Army Day and said the army’s spirit and innovative capacities are high and can be developed further.
“Because of its high capacity, the army is meeting its own needs and has received the respect of international observers,“ he said.

Iran’s peaceful nuclear program is the hot topic in the US presidential campaign.
Hawkish Republican candidate John McCain, in order to please the US warmongers, tries to adopt a tough and rigid stance toward Iran. He has also promised to apply massive diplomatic and financial pressures on Iran to try to prevent it from developing alleged nuclear weapon, if elected president.
According to BBC Persian, Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton called President George W. Bush’s Iran policy “a loser“, while McCain believes that the US domestic situation does not allow the government to wage a possible war against Iran.
In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, the elderly Republican said it would be difficult to convince the American people to go to war against Iran.
If he decided he had to attack, McCain said he would have to make an “even more convincing argument that it was necessary to do so because of our failure to find weapons of mass destruction“ in Iraq.
“There’s a little credibility gap,“ he said, referring to Bush, who justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq by saying it possessed weapons of mass destruction.
In the opposition camp, the Democrat campaigner Clinton recommended low-level talks between Washington and Tehran.
Clinton who was speaking at a meeting of newspaper publishers on Tuesday, said “the approach that the Bush administration...has neither changed behaviors or produced results“.
She sought to strike a balance between the hawkish approach taken by the Bush administration and her Democratic rival Barack Obama’s call for face-to-face talks with the Iranian president.
The New York senator said, she would “try to create the beginning of lower levels of diplomatic engagement, some ongoing process“.
Clinton’s remarks was not only in contrast with McCain’s tough stance, but also were different from her Democratic rival Obama’s views.
Opposing Obama’s views on Iran, Clinton has painted him as too inexperienced in foreign policy, while Obama has accused her of siding with Republicans because of her Senate vote last year to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he has “expectations Iran will remain front and center certainly for at least the next three to five years“.
Responding to questions after a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, Mullen said, “I would hope that in the future we could figure out a way to dialogue with them to figure out a way ahead. We’ve done that in the past with our enemies. We should be able to do that as well.“

Iran’s ambassador to Bulgaria, Habibollah Biazar, died of stomach cancer on Wednesday in Sofia, according to IRIB.