Ayatollah Khamenei says the war with Iraq has proven that Iran can support itself.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that the Islamic Republic’s 1980-88 war with Iraq proved that the country could protect itself without discussing the new circumstances directly. “Is there a greater victory for Iran, seeking for eight years, doing everything they can, and still doing nothing?” Khamenei said.

In a TV video address to top military leaders and war veterans around the country, Khamenei made the remarks, delivered at the beginning of “Good Defense” week marking the anniversary of the war. “Holy Defense has proven that this country’s violence is very expensive,” he added.

Khamenei said, “If a nation reveals that it has the strength and resolve to protect itself … it forces the aggressor to think twice before attacking,” and if it wishes to act strategically, it will know that it is not to its advantage and that it is quite risky.

A year and a half after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, sparking the conflict that was finally brought to an end by an UN-brokered truce. The war made the revolution in Iran “much bigger” than it had been before. The supreme leader also accused Western powers of having armed Saddam while depriving Iran of assistance, claiming that it revealed “the reality of Western culture and its existence.” His speech came after a joint announcement by the United States that UN sanctions on Iran were back in place and threatened to place “consequences” on non-compliant nations.

The change was rejected by other world forces as constitutionally void. Since June 2019, Iran and the United States have come to the verge of overt conflict twice. Through producing works of literature on a global scale, officials maintain the legacy of the war as “part of the cultural history” of Iranians.

This year, Iran cancelled a military parade organized annually to commemorate the anniversary of the war over the latest pandemic of coronavirus, which since March has killed more than 24,400 and infected over 425,000 people in the Islamic Republic. Khamenei urged Iranians, recalling that the virus kills about 150 people every day in the country, to better follow health measures such as social distancing and wearing masks.