TEHRAN – Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, paid a three-hour visit to an industrial exhibition on Saturday morning. 

The exhibition was held in the Imam Khomeini Hussainiyah and covered activities in different fields. 

This exhibition was held in accordance with this year’s slogan, which the Leader had previously announced to be, “Production: Knowledge-Based and Job-Creating,” according to khamenei.ir. 

In this exhibition, domestic capabilities were showcased in the fields of mining and exploration, electronics and telecommunications, aerospace and satellites, automobiles, agriculture and food, railway transportation, roads, sea and air transportation, the housing sector, the oil and petrochemical industry, household appliances, textiles, the aquaculture industry, watershed management, electricity and power plant industries, dam construction and water management projects, as well as information and communications technology.

Ayatollah Khamenei has long reiterated the need to pay attention of domestic capabilities of the country. In late August, 2022 speech, the Leader lauded the Raisi administration of paying heed to domestic capabilities. “Another great achievement this Administration has made is that it has brought our society out of a state of expectation. It has turned people’s gaze away from foreigners. It has come out of the state of continuously waiting to see what others have to say about us, or what they will decide for us, or what they’re going to do,” he said, adding, “Importance has been given to domestic capacities, reliance has been placed on these, and work is being done. Some people say we should definitely have relations with a certain country in order to solve our problems, but this is very harmful to our country. Relying on others and waiting for them to solve the country’s issues is the wrong approach. Thankfully, such a thing has been minimized to a great extent in your Administration.”

In the same speech, the Leader underlined the need for prioritizing economics. “In my opinion, economics is currently our first priority. Not that we shouldn’t attend to other issues, we must attend to all of them. But our main focus should be on economic issues, and I’ll explain this further on. So once we have determined our priorities, priorities should also be set from among the sub-sectors of each major sector. For example, what’s the priority in economics? What’s the priority in cultural issues? We should manage the priorities in each of these fields. But as I said, the first and most important priority today is economics in my opinion. [However], this is for now. For how long? We don’t know. For some time,” he said. 

The Leader added, “Economics should be attended to very seriously but in accordance with culture. Everything you do in the field of economics must be accompanied by a cultural concept, and this is important. Now suppose there may also be diplomatic, cultural, and other issues for you to attend to as well.”