Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – June 17, 1981

I left home at six o’clock so that consultations could take place before the session, which was extremely sensitive. The agenda was discussion of the rules of procedure for examining the President’s political competence. Although I had canceled the leaves, because of the absence of a number of liberals, we had only a slim majority. The session continued until five-thirty in the afternoon. The rules of procedure were approved.

An article was added to the rules of procedure at the proposal of Mr. [Mohammad] Mojtahed Shabestari, with my agreement, which created a problem. Under this article, a two-thirds vote of the representatives would be required to withdraw political competence. Some of the more hard-line representatives were upset, even though most of them had voted in favor of the proposal, because there was a slight possibility that some representatives might abstain. Although more than 140 representatives had signed the motion declaring the President politically incompetent, the possibility arose that we might fail to obtain the required vote. They wanted to disrupt the session, but I resisted. Perhaps my agreement with this article was one of my political mistakes. May God bring a good outcome; I seek refuge in God.

In the afternoon, we had a meeting of the Presiding Board and arranged the agenda for the following week. We also had a great deal of discussion about this issue. Mr. Kiaoush, who was very angry, spoke harshly to Mr. Qeysar, a Parliament employee. He became offended, submitted his request for retirement, and left.

At night, Mr. Mohsen Rezaei came and reported that some of the opponents who had previously intended to stage a coup had become active in recent days and had also been in contact with Mr. Bani-Sadr. They considered the timing favorable. The Revolutionary Guards are pursuing them. Mr. Bani-Sadr has been missing for one day. It is probably connected with this plot. The plotters are royalists and nationalists, along with some of Mr. Bani-Sadr’s associates. After all this work and exhaustion, I came home late at night.