Our nation missed the best historical opportunities because—at a time when the world had just taken the route to knowledge and industry and while, with vigilance and dynamism, Iran could have played its part in the scientific and industrial progress of humanity and benefit from its fruits—it was left behind the world, thanks to its captivity in the hands of tyrannical, ignorant, and dependent rulers. Instead of building the country and reviving its human and natural potentials, Pahlavi and Qajar kings sold Iran to predators and plunderers [the foreigners], either letting the foreigners exploit the resources or stalling the resources, thus ruining human talents; in place of the well-being of the nation, they aimed at the interests of the regime and of the foreign corporations. This proceeded to the point that, when the railway entered our country—with a hundred years of delay—rather than national interests and commercial requirements of the nation, it was the military interests of the enemies that determined the passage of the railroad. In the course of two hundred years, Iran which was once the flagship of the world of knowledge thanks to Islam, was transformed to a wreck needy of and dominated by foreigners as a result of the dependent political system, imprudent management, lack of self-confidence, and despotism in the Pahlavi and Qajar regimes. As a result, the villages became deserted, the urban areas became consumerists, the farms became fruitless, the industry became assembly lines and brains were left unused.
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