Calling for a deep and accelerated scientific drive, Ayatollah Khamenei urges Iran’s brightest minds to push the boundaries of knowledge, turn innovation into solutions for national challenges, and strengthen the country’s technological independence and global standing.

TEHRAN -- Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei said Monday the key to a "stronger Iran" lies in the scientific boundary-breaking of its elites, calling for a "deep and accelerated scientific surge" and urging officials to provide the infrastructure for that leap while drawing maximally on the individual capacities and collective wisdom of the country's top talents.

In a message read out at a ceremony honoring scientific and sports medal winners, the Leader described Iran as "more than ever the manifestation of will and hope" and said the role of the country's talented youth and elites in that hope and progress and in stepping toward its brilliant future is "unparalleled."

He stressed that the geography of elitism is not confined to science and technology or sport and various skills: "Any kind of positive and desirable distinction can realize elitism."

Citing examples, he said that in recent days the country has witnessed the manifestation of elitism by the finest of this land's people who strive to raise the sacred flag of the homeland with an eye to a wider horizon.

"These are the elites of insight and jihad. We consider the 'Riz Ali Khajavis' and 'Ali Landis' as elites whose names should be inscribed at the head of cultural institutions," he said.

Riz Ali Khajavi, a farmer from Mianeh, saved a passenger train from a landslide in 1961 by setting his jacket alight and firing his rifle as a warning, becoming known as the "Self-Sacrificing Farmer" and a fixture of Iranian school textbooks.

Ali Landi was a 15-year-old from Izeh who died in 2021 after suffering 90 percent burns while rescuing two women from a burning house, and was later declared a martyr.

The Leader sad that among this category of the community's finest flowers are the martyrs and self-sacrificers who, through the sacrifice of their lives and health, left an extraordinary effect on the fate of Islamic Iran and its dear nation and received the medal of servitude from the One God.

The Leader congratulated the entire dear nation and every one of the achievers on the many medals and scientific honors won in the olympiads of astronomy and astrophysics, mathematics, earth sciences, geography, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science and artificial intelligence, and the humanities, as well as recent sports honors.

He expressed his appreciation for the determination and will of the vanguard of the caravan of honor and hope and the standard-bearers of the country's progress across all elite strata, from adolescents and youth to coaches, professors and the wise.

He said the motivation and hope of elites for transformation in the country is a "blazing flame" he has witnessed from near and far over the years and decades.

Observing the great and hope-inspiring movement of elites and the scientific current in the country and its manifestations in repeated, successive and annual championships in scientific fields, olympiads and sports is a source of pride and honor for the entire Iranian nation, the Leader said.

The brilliant rankings of the country's hard-working athletes in various fields in recent days and months, and the recording of new records, he said, testify to their effort, endeavor, will and faith.

Those athletes who with their physical strength and spiritual, moral and faith-based power and continuous effort add to the authority of dear Iran before the eyes of all nations and flaunt the vitality of the zealous Iranian nation to the whole world; those sportswomen who make the honorable symbol of Iranian women's dress shine in the world; those sports medal winners who create joy and enthusiasm in the heart of the Iranian nation and lend honor to the proud flag of Islamic Iran — "each one is, to their own extent, a contributor to and effective in giving meaning to a strong Iran."

Addressing those interested in knowledge, the nation's elites and the wise of dear Iran, the Leader said elitism is a divine blessing and gift whose main source is the talent and intellectual share that the Iranian nation, especially its youth, possesses.

"The condition of reason and servitude is that man renders good thanks for the divine blessing, and if thanks is offered at all levels — heart, tongue and action — the path to reaching the perfection of that blessing is prepared."

He said appreciation of the blessing of elitism must first be rendered by the elite person themselves and then, in subsequent levels, in their surrounding environment — from father and mother and family and teacher and professor to the atmosphere of the school and university and the country's system — so that this capacity grows and increases and is put to proper use.

On that basis, the elite person bears a heavier responsibility in rendering practical thanks for this blessing, and it is fitting that in addition to empowering and growing their own elitism, they employ this talent in the best possible way to solve the country's and society's problems.

"The elite is not a person who, merely by possessing notable talent and intelligence, thinks like a separate thread only of fleeting and personal desires; the elite is the person who cares about the growth of their talent, defines themselves as an effective element in society, and uses their talent and capacity for their own and their society's growth simultaneously."

The Leader said the Iranian elite has shown that knowledge and talent can be turned into a tool for solving the real problems of the people and the country, and that from stem cells and nano and biological technologies to advanced aerospace, industry and mining, medicine, agriculture, nuclear, energy and infrastructure technologies, they have sought to make their science, knowledge and elitism practical.

"All of us see the effects and manifestations of this forward-moving movement in real life": electricity generation with Iranian turbines in power plants, knowledge-based technology in desalination plants of the southern islands, agricultural drones flying over fields, orchards and rice paddies of the north to optimize agricultural and water and soil operations, the birth of children of infertile families with Royan's advanced technologies, diagnosis and treatment of incurable diseases with radiopharmaceuticals, monitoring of land and water and products with remote-sensing satellites, and improvement of productivity and food security with scientific and technological initiatives — "only expressible examples of this great and blessed collection," and many others, especially in defense and military fields, have at their time "stunned the eyes of the world and will do so in the future."

"A strong Iran is founded on scientific and technological authority, and this axis is one of the most important components of Iran's role-playing in the equations and new world order. So the key to its becoming ever stronger is the boundary-breaking and solution-finding of elites in the country's scientific problems, and the malice and crimes of the enemies of Islamic Iran against scientists and elites demonstrate the effective role of elites in the country's strength."

That enemy, he said, which assassinates the prominent scientists and influential elites of our society in the second and third imposed wars and, indeed, years before that in their scientific environments and ordinary lives, "cannot bear to see Iran's progress and authority and uses all its tools and methods to weaken the elites of dear Iran" — from making them despair and disillusioned to seizing their minds and souls, being swallowed in the digestive system of modern colonialism and turning them into a bolt of the machine of plunder and capitalism of the West.

"Unaware that the drop of blood of the nation's martyred elites and scientists and professors and students and schoolchildren has raised and will raise a storm of will and progress."

The Leader said the Iranian nation remembers the record of its ancient civilization and its various honors in sciences and techniques and its possession of world-renowned luminaries and scientists alongside two centuries of severe backwardness and historical passivity of the Qajar and Pahlavi eras.

This nation, he said, knows the value of the victorious meta-strategy of "Al-Ilm-u Sultan" and its results in not accepting Western scientific domination, and the rapid scientific and research growth of elites in the past three decades, a considerable amount of which is owed to the special measures and guidance of the great martyr leader.

"If before the current stage and the third imposed war, a new scientific surge was a necessary and essential recommendation for elites, the experience of the two recent wars proved to all that this new scientific surge must be deep and accelerated."

To that end, the Leader said, in addition to the officials of scientific, research and technological bodies and centers, each and every elite and wise person of dear Iran must attend to their main mission in building the glorious future of Islamic Iran and its progress and development, and observe the following points:

"First, there must be a serious and precise practical program for the growth of basic sciences and humanities in the country. The growth and development of basic sciences such as physics, chemistry, biological sciences and mathematics, as the main foundations of other sciences and applied technologies, is the driving force of the country's scientific and technological progress. Every nation that has reached somewhere has reached there through basic sciences, and a country without development in these sciences always lags behind."

"Second, focus on undiscovered truths, boundary-breaking in basic sciences and a permanent competition to solve the well-known unsolved problems in these sciences, especially mathematics, must be continuously attended to as a goal and destination."

"Third, the key point in the scientific surge is creativity and innovation. Giving the field to creativity and positive imagination, which is the main element of growth and opening in all or most sciences, the scientific courage to invent and create and innovate and increase personal and national self-confidence to experience new and untrodden paths is very necessary and useful. Considering acceptable and attractive incentives for anyone who can present a workable creativity is effective in preparing the ground for this."

"Fourth, self-reliance in solving scientific problems, providing the infrastructure and removing technological bottlenecks for extra-territorial activism and action creates a combination of strength of internal construction for horizon-opening at the global level."

"Fifth, giving the field to the talent of elites in experimental and practical fields, including in connecting industry to the university from the earliest student years and facilitating knowledge-based businesses, plays an important role in employing knowledge and the growth of elites. Aligning the country's scientific and technological capacities and strengthening the link between elites and scientific and research centers with knowledge-based companies, industries and even start-ups, alongside the support of executive bodies for the chain from knowledge to consumption, around the axis of the important issues of today and tomorrow of the country — from water, soil, food and energy to artificial intelligence — can connect and transfer the professor's and student's workbench from university laboratories and research centers to workshops and factories. An accelerated leap is realized when the economic interests and commercial market of products and services are mixed with the motivation and will of elites and establish a stable and continuous connection of the institution of science and research with industry and the consumer market."

The Leader further said the direct and effective role-playing of elites of all theoretical and experimental fields of the university and the seminary at the levels of planning and policy-making helps greatly in the country's progress, and "officials have the duty to take abundant benefit from the individual capacities and rationality and collective wisdom of committed elites."

"If this path is traversed correctly, the centre of gravity and centers of knowledge, especially some types of basic sciences, will gradually come to Iran from Western countries, and the country will in not-so-distant years become a scientific and technological reference, and the goal stated by our wise and martyred leader regarding the transformation of Persian into one of the reference languages of world science will be realized."

The Leader said: "God willing, by the blessing of the blood of the martyrs of the field of elitism and the good prayers of our master and guardian, the deep and accelerated scientific surge of the nation's elites and wise and the all-round progress of an ever-stronger Iran toward reaching a new Islamic-Iranian civilization will be realized and made possible."