Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – September 22, 1987

Sahargah, [Seaman Malekzadegan], the commander of the army's navy, reported on the phone that America had attacked one of our cargo ships. Before the order, I talked about the American attack on our cargo ship in the north of Bahrain.

I went to Azadi Square and participated in the armed forces parade and gave a short speech. The parade lasted until noon.

At noon I got the details of the news about the American attack. There are some sea mines in our cargo ship and apparently it is going to Bushehr. Two American helicopters attacked it and disabled the ship. In this attack, three people were martyred and two people were missing, and they took a group, and the names of some of them are unknown. They prevent our forces from approaching the ship.

Mr. [Mirhossein Mousavi] the Prime Minister informed that the tugboat of the oil company approached the Iranian ship Ajr, but the Americans warned it to return. Navy [Army] forces, which were supposed to leave early in the morning, have entered the area late. Finally, it turned out that 26 people are alive and captured, three are martyred and two are missing.

In the afternoon, Messrs. [Hasan] Rouhani, [Mohammed Ali] Hadi, and [Siros] Naseri came, regarding the line of propaganda that we are not to accept the laying of mines and not to say anything about carrying mines for Bushehr.

I had several meetings in the evening; The Minister of Defense and... that night, a group of IRGC missile technical officials came with Mohsen to discuss the creation of the Sajil missile production line - which the IRGC recently tested and has a range of about one hundred kilometers; I promised financial and administrative support.