Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – November 11, 1987

The parliament session started with a little delay. I stayed in the meeting until half past ten. Before noon, I spoke with Mr. [Aladdin] Boroujerdi, our ambassador in China, in my office. He said that under the pressure of America, they have stopped transporting weapons by sea. This kind of approach reduces the depth of relations and I complained that they gave Iraq air-to-ground and air-to-sea silkworm missiles. The Iraqis have recently used this type of missile, which is said to have been obtained from China; Maybe they got it from somewhere else.

Mr. Agha Mohammadi came. He gave a report on the situation of the Iraqi Ikrad camps in Kurdistan and the West and demanded emphasis on speeding up their development and repair, which I conveyed to Mr. Faruzandeh.

Mr. [Hossein [Kamali and] Mohammad] Salah came and requested to amend Article 27. This article has encountered problems in the parliament. In the evening, the board of the parliament had a meeting. Maghrib, a group of Basij officials came on the occasion of Basij week. I spoke for them.

The night of the leaders' meeting was at Ahmad Agha's house. Imam participated in the meeting. The debilitating effect of his silence was discussed in yesterday's speech on war. It was supposed to be compensated somehow. Their opinion is that these noises do not have a great impact on the deployment of troops and the enemies will also notice, and in addition, due to the differences between the heads of the army and the IRGC, there will not be much progress in the war. We also mentioned the problem of the IRGC and the army and asked them to help solve it. We decided to give our opinions to them. We asked about the merger of the two ministries of defense and the IRGC. At the moment, they did not agree and said that in practice, if we leave the minister as non-military and non-military, both of them will be unhappy, but they promised that it should be done at a suitable time.