Today the Army is one of the most populist organizations in the country. Among the different organizations that make up the government, we see that the Army is one of the organizations that has come closest to the people and their tendencies and feelings and that it has contributed most to the popular movement in our society. This is a very valuable and precious thing. It is a fact that throughout the world, armies are established and deployed with the slogan of safeguarding national interests, but is this really the case? Did the US Army safeguard the interests of the American people in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did the people of America benefit from the occupation of Afghanistan? Were they happy about killing the people of Afghanistan? Were the interests of America served by the mercenary soldiers who shot the people, dismembered their bodies and took pictures with the body parts? If somebody asks the leaders of the US regime why they need the big army and the advanced military equipment, their answer would be: we need them to protect our national interests. Are they telling the truth? This is the case with almost every part of the world. Of course, I am not claiming that this is definitely the case everywhere because I do not have all the necessary information. The situation might be different in a particular corner of the world. But based on what we have seen and learnt, this is often the case throughout the world: armies are established in the name of national interests, but they are not at the service of national interests, rather they are at the service of political ambitions. This has been the case throughout the history of mankind. A man deploys more than a million soldiers to go and occupy Greece, but he is defeated and is forced to return to the country. This was an achievement of our taghuti past, during the time of Xerxes. These things were not done for the sake of national interests. As far as I know and on the basis of what has been recorded in history books and what is available to us, this has often been the case with armies throughout history: they have either been at the service of personal ambitions or at the service of safeguarding tryannical powers.

During the early years after the victory of the Revolution, part of the Army had been stationed in a royal palace in order to protect it. A notice had been put up at the palace which said something along the lines of "basically the Army has been established to protect this government" which is very different from protecting national interests. If we see an army, somewhere in the world, whose beliefs and feelings are the same as those of the people, an army which is truly at the service of the people and national interests, rather than at the service of certain individuals, that army is extremely valuable. And you make up such an army. I really do not know of another example. As for the countries that have recently carried out a revolution, we should wait and see what happens, but currently I do not know of any such army, an army that is not at the service of personal ambitions, an army that would not fight to death for the sake of a particular person. I would like to stress that neither God nor Islamic principles would allow us to order our Army, our Armed Forces or our men to fight to death for the sake of a particular person. Yes, everybody may fight to death for the sake of Islam. For the sake of raising the flag of our independence as an Islamic country, everybody must be ready to fight to death and this death is called martyrdom. Then our Army would be a divine and spiritual army. It would be an Islamic army, an example of the "immaculate tree" that I have discussed previously. This has been the goal since the beginning of the Revolution. And I would tell you that fortunately we have been moving closer to this goal.