TEHRAN— Iran’s Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told a Monday conference on Popular Governance in the Discourse of Justice and Republic that putting all eggs in the basket of Americans is a grave mistake.

At the beginning of his remarks, the minister said that discourse cannot be found in a vacuum and space, but the discourse must be based on time and location. 

Vahidi added, “People are not a political slogan or anything like that for the country's officials. What is being said to the people in the world is far from what is being said in the Islamic Republic.”

The minister noted that religious democracy in the Islamic Republic is completely different from the current notion of democracy in the world, underlining, “For this reason, we need a discourse of justice and republic, one that would make a discovery of the real needs, and this requirement appears in the discourse of the Islamic Republic.”

Any party or group that does not oppose the United States and the enemy does not believe in the progress of the country, Vahidi asserted, adding, “If we want progress, we should not go under the dominance of the U.S. and globalization.”

A movement that is forcing the officials to rely on the West and seeking a lenience towards the West is not after the progress of the country, the minister noted.

“Those people are clinging to a string that is rotting and ending up in bullets and mortars, as observed in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and Palestine.”