IM: Iran to Maintain Inspiring Role in Muslim World

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said that the pressures exerted by the West on the Iranian nation to make Tehran stop its support for Islamic Awakening are ineffective and Iran will maintain its inspiring role among the Muslim countries.

"Enemy is trying to limit Tehran's regional influence by embroiling it into internal problems but Islamic Republic will continue its inspiring role toward the Muslim world and his support for popular Islamic Awakening in the region," Moslehi underscored.

He referred to the West's oil sanctions against Iran, and said that the West's oil embargo on Iran's oil is not a threat against Islamic Republic and Tehran assumes it as an opportunity.

"In today's world the economic situation of the EU won't permit it to make serious economic pressure upon Tehran by approving an embargo," Moslehi said in Isfahan city on Monday.

He noted that the hegemonic powers are trying to induce disappointment in Iran by approving sanctions but the assassination of Iranian scientist by these powers' intelligence apparatus proves that the previous embargos were fruitless and could not change Tehran's progress forward.

Warning about the enemy plots for destabilizing Iran on the occasion of Parliamentarian election (2012, March 2), Iran's intelligence minister added that Islamic Republic will defeat all hostile plots.

Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei had also earlier said that enemies are making their utmost efforts to prevent the rising nations and the Islamic Awakening movement from modeling on Iran.

"The evils (the US and its allies) know that the eyes of the awakened regional nations are stared at our dear country and therefore they have used all their possibilities to prevent Iran and the Iranians from becoming a role model for the great Islamic Awakening movement and to avoid prevalence of the Iranian nation's path of resistance among other nations," Ayatollah Khamenei said in October.

He also underlined that the US officials have admitted the influence of the Islamic Iran among other nations as a cause of the failure of their policies, specially in the Middle-East, and said due to the same reason they are trying to defeat Iran at home to stop its growth abroad.

In doing so, he said, they try to "slander the situation in the country by magnifying the weaknesses and downplaying progresses of the Iranian nation".

Since the beginning of 2011, the Muslim world has witnessed popular uprisings and revolutions similar to what happened in Iran in 1979.

Tunisia saw the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in a popular revolution in January, which was soon followed by a revolution which toppled Hosni Mubarak in Egypt in February.

Libya was the third country touched by the Islamic Awakening. Libyans also embraced victory after months of bloody campaign against dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi.

Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have since been the scene of protests against their totalitarian rulers, who have resorted to brutal crackdown on demonstrations to silence their critics.