Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – March 23, 1985

I was at home all day. I talked to Mr. Sayad and [Mohsen] Rezaei several times. Mr. Rezaei announced the failure of Iraq's last night's attack on the "Tarabe" checkpoint, as a result of which a number of Iraqis were captured. Most of our forces there are Iraqi fighters subordinate to the Supreme Assembly. Mr. Rezaei informed about the effort to prepare and compensate for the past and Mr. Sayad informed about the delay of his program.

Ahmad Agha came before noon and talked about the need to announce the acceptance of the UN proposal regarding cities, the sea, chemical weapons and airlines, and it was decided that we would announce it tomorrow. He said that Imam's opinion is that until this situation and the possibility of Iraqi air attack on Tehran continue, no one except me and Mr. [Ayatollah] Khamenei should go to Friday prayers, because it is possible that he will not be able to manage the sermons during the crisis.

In the evening, Ahmad Agha came again and suggested that since Iraq did not attack civilians today, it would be good to stop launching rockets tonight. We were supposed to hit Baghdad with rockets tonight. I consulted with the president and the prime minister and their opinion was the same. I ordered not to fire missiles and not to attack the Iraqi border towns with artillery, and we are going to announce this tomorrow. Because our position is to counter the same.

They brought the reports, I read them. Western and Arab propaganda agencies are trying to introduce Iraq as the victor in the east of the Tigris.