Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – August 18, 1998

Today, the results of the interrogation of [Bill] Clinton, the President of the United States, regarding his illicit relations were announced. He admitted to having wrong relationships and then in a televised talk, repeating his confession, he apologized to the people, his wife and his daughter. This issue is at the top of the news all over the world and the possibility of his impeachment in the US Congress is seriously discussed. The issue is significant in many ways, and the issue of another illicit relationship that he had with another woman years ago has come to life and is one of the rare or unprecedented cases in the history of America and the world. The interrogation lasted more than five hours.

The decline in the value of the Russian ruble raises the risk of another economic crisis and the removal of American nationals from Pakistan is of interest to observers after the role of people in Pakistan in the explosions in Kenya and Tanzania and the possibility of an American attack on Afghanistan to arrest [Osama] Bin Laden, [the leader of al-Qaeda], who is there, is clarified.

Mr. Mohsen Rezaei, [Secretary of the Expediency Assessment Council] came. He appreciated my Friday sermon about Afghanistan and presented a plan regarding military intervention in Afghanistan, which I did not like and I told him to give it to the leadership, I am not responsible for this. I told him the statements of Mr. Sardar [Qasim] Soleimani, [commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC], which he had quoted from Ahmad Shah Massoud; Masoud said that General Aslam Baig, the former commander of the Pakistan army, told him that only Pakistan can act through Afghanistan to control the countries of Central Asia and bring them into the line of Islam. Since Iran is Shiite, it has no victory in the Sunni region, and Arab countries have no way or motivation, Turkey does not care about Islam, and Hamid Gul, [the head of Pakistan's intelligence agency] Hamid Gul, has also asked Afghans to weave a carpet for him, with a plan to bring the light of Islam from Pakistan to Central Asia through Afghanistan. If these quotes are true, it shows that the Pakistani military is thinking of encroaching on the north of Jaihun, and the leader of the Taliban, Maulvi Omar, has recently talked about Greater Khorasan, including Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, and Mashhad.

A group of freedmen came. Mr. [Ali Akbar] Abu Torabi, [Representative of the Jurisprudence in the affairs of freedmen] and [Abbasali] Vakili, [Head of the Headquarters for handling the affairs of freedmen] reported. I also spoke for them; I also said about the Iranian hostages in Afghanistan. To complete a program for my autobiography, I had an interview with Sedavasima, about the editing and publishing of books on the history of Palestine, Amir Kabir, and Shiite school magazine.

In the evening, Mr. [Mohammed] Jafari Gilani, [Mahmoud] Mohammadi Iraqi and Taha Hashemi, [members of the Board of Trustees of Qom Islamic Propaganda Office] came. They expressed their concern about the downward trend of the position of religious authority and the leadership and destructive activities of internal and external opponents and the situation of the press and the elections of experts, and by mentioning the factors that have brought the matter to this point, they asked me to seriously enter the scene and take over the direction of the main stream of the revolution as before. I said that the leadership of the labor policy should be identified before, and without it, it will not be fruitful. They wanted me to go to Mashhad and negotiate with them with enough time. I said, leaders usually say that the situation is good and there is no need to worry, and they said that in their speech today.

Mr. [Hossein] Mahluji, [former Minister of Mines and Metals] came. He complained to Vaizhaha magazine and Kihan newspaper that they wrote false news against him, citing the Court of Accounts, which the court denied. I stayed in my office at night.