Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – February 20, 1999

Last night, today and tonight, it rained a lot and it is still raining. I reached my office at nine o'clock in the morning. The doors and walls of Tehran are covered with advertisements of the [election] council candidates. General policies were discussed in the general meeting of the Assembly [Determining Expediency of the Nizam]. Due to the incompleteness of the commission's approval, all the time was spent on generalizations and it was not finished.

After the meeting, Dr. [Hasan] Habibi, [the first vice president] came and consulted about the trip to Bangladesh to participate in the meeting on December 8th, and he said that the reason for canceling the trip to Latin America was the absence of the president of Venezuela. Mr. [Mohammed Mohammadi] Ray Shahri, [representative of the Assembly of Experts] came and consulted on the draft plan he prepared to amend the [Internal Assembly] Regulations.

Mr. [Qorban Ali] Dori Najafabadi, [Information Minister] came. In an interview a few days ago, he criticized the statements of Mr. Mohsen Rezaei, [Secretary of the Expediency Detection Council], who said that the murders and many recent incidents in Iran are influenced and provoked by the agents of Israel and the hypocrites, and Mr. Dori denied his statements and wrote a letter to the leadership in this regard and also gave a denial to the reporter. I said, I know that the statements are just rumors and have no validity, and I have also warned them, and the foreign media have abused them a lot. Mr. Dori also complained about Faizah because of the article written about her resignation in the newspaper Mozur [Zan].

In the evening Mr. [Mohammedreza] Mokhbar [Dezfouli, from the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution] came. He gave a report on the situation of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. He mainly followed the same old orders and said from the recent meeting that Mr. [Mohammed] Yazdi, [Chief of the Judiciary] and most of the members did not accept Mr. [Syed Mohammad] Khatami's [President] conclusion about the press and it led to an argument.

Mrs. [Masoumeh] Ebtekar, [head of the Environmental Protection Organization] and environmental managers came. They gave a work report and I also talked about the expectations from the organization. They requested me to open their international conference. Mr. [Ali Akbar] Shabani Far, the head of shipbuilding in the Persian Gulf and the former governor of Ilam, came. After presenting a report on the state of the company, he requested to tell [Mr. Gholamreza Shafii], Minister of Industries, to cooperate more.

I did the work until nine o'clock at night. The martyrdom of Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Sadr, the Friday Imam of Iraq, and his two children [Mustafa and Muamal Sadr], by terrorists, is an important issue. According to the reports, there are riots and riots in most Shiite cities of Iraq. At first, Saddam's regime supported him, but recently, because of his national and Islamic positions, it opposed him. [Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee], the Prime Minister of India went to Pakistan by land and by bus, and the Jamaat-e-Islami party has announced opposition and a nationwide march.