Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei warned Wednesday that colonial powers through soft warfare are after distracting 'our nation' from its talents.

َAccording to the Leader's official website khamenei.ir, 'on November 17, 2021, a group of Iranian academic elites and top talents in science met with Imam Khamenei.

During this meeting, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, after hearing the remarks made by the academic elites and scholars, stressed the destructive role colonialism has always played in keeping other nations back by trying to persuade them “to ignore their talents.” The following is an excerpt of the main points Imam Khamenei mentioned in this meeting.

An important part of the colonizers’ soft warfare is causing nations to ignore their talents.

They keep repeating to a nation that it cannot do anything until that nation itself denies its talents.

When a nation becomes negligent of its capabilities, it becomes easy to plunder that nation.

There were great civilizations in Africa that were completely destroyed due to the neglect of their capabilities and due to the soft war the colonizers waged against them.

In his memoirs, Nehru points to this fact and how the British destroyed the industry of self-reliant India.' The momentum of our scientific growth should be such that in 50 years’ time, Iran will become a global source of science and other nations will feel the need to learn Persian to access new sciences.

This was once the case; our scientists topped in science and this can happen again.

The country’s scientific community should aim at solving the nation’s issues.

The ruling body should get help from the universities to solve the nation’s issues.

Artificial Intelligence will play a role in managing the future of the world.

This should be seriously taken into consideration.

We should at least be among the top 10 countries of the world in this field