Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – December 18, 1987

I woke up in the morning. For the first time, I spoke to Menzel on the phone. Yasser had come on leave. At eight in the morning, we left for Imam Port.

At ten o'clock, we arrived at the Iran-Japan petrochemical complex. The relevant managers gathered in a meeting in a large building where they said they brought the complex from Japan as prefabricated and installed it within two months. Mr. Taheri, the director of petrochemicals, criticized Mr. [Mohammed] Faruzandeh, the manager of Khatam engineering base, for taking part of the petrochemical facilities for war. I said they should pay attention to the priority of holy defense.

When I went to the warehouses to see the progress of the work, I was more upset and criticized and protested about the storage of all those expensive goods in the warehouse, which is subject to Iraqi bombing. They gave unacceptable explanations. For two hours, I visited different places there and Shimai Razi; It is very huge. Unfortunately, it has been closed due to the war and has been bombed many times. They said it was bombed 16 times. They also have transportation problems to take the produced salt and sulfur.

We had lunch and prayed there and then we visited the salt producing lakes from the sea water; It is interesting. They said that they have two and a half million tons of salt that cannot be harvested. This salt is for use in factories that have not yet started. We returned to Ahvaz. We arrived at four in the afternoon. I rested a little.

Mr. Shamkhani came from the northwest. He gave a promising description of future operations. After the Maghrib prayer, we came to Zergan and spent the night as guests of the army ground forces. The commanders of the forces were gathered. I had breakfast with them and they raised their demands and I gave them explanations; It was a good meeting. We ate dinner and

We came to golf to relax and I wrote these memories, bathing and sleeping.