Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – December 7, 1997

Mr. [Syedhamid] Tahai, the governor of Ardabil, came; He used to be the governor of Semnan. A comparison between the status of two Kurdish provinces, in most indicators, Semnan province is ahead due to its small population and proximity to Tehran and having infrastructure and a long history; Although the resources of Ardabil province have a good development capacity. I said, if the approved and ongoing plans in Ardabil are implemented, it will move forward quickly with dams, railways, highways, the second phase of Moghan, the development of tourism, livestock, agriculture, geothermal energy, and the mobility of industrial towns.

Doctor [Hadi] Manafi came. Now Mr. [Mohammed Taqi] explained the philosophy that he is in the hospital. He said, Mrs. [Masouma] Ebtekar, [the head of the Environmental Protection Organization], spends a lot of money on the decoration of the office and office and has eliminated the good forces.

Mr. Masih Mohajeri, [the managing director of the Islamic Republic newspaper] came. For my interview with the newspaper, he insists on the domain and the clergy and is worried that the religious authority system will gradually become a religious dictatorship, separated from the people. He offers me the proposal to establish a party and negotiate with the leadership to change the way and criticizes the way the leadership attends the summit of the Organization of Islamic Conference and thinks that if Ayatollah Montazeri is not limited, he will continue the struggle.

Zahor Mohsen came to organize the schedule of my attendance at the [Heads of the Organization of the Islamic Conference] meeting and the schedule of banquets and meetings and reception of guests. In the evening, the library organized the room in my office. I was the guest of Ayatollah Khamenei last night. We talked about the conference and the guests and the absence of some important leaders and the text of their speech. They said, they have applied most of my remarks in their speech. Some memories about the Imam, including that after he arrived in Tehran from France, one of the people from Hal told him that the Imam would live another eleven years, "God will multiply his life" which we thought was unlikely in those days and it happened. Me and him and Mr. [Syed Abdul Karim Mousavi] Ardabili, Mr. [Syed Mohammad] Beheshti and Mr. [Mohammed Javad] Bahaner went to Qom to bring him, after he had a stroke in Qom and we brought him to Tehran in the middle of the night.

Another thing is that before the first presidential election, he and I went to Qom to convince the imam to nominate Shahid Beheshti, but they did not accept the imam and did not appoint anyone, and when we asked who it would be, they said they do not know, but it could be someone like Seyyed Jalal [Tehrani] - one of the government officials before the revolution! We met in the corridor and in the presence of Ahmad Agha, and they said that when they were in the heart hospital after the assassination attempt on him [on July 6, 2010], it was very unsafe there, because of the presence of hypocrites there, they had named the hospital "Mahdi Rezaei Hospital" and distributed 72 tons of sweets as a sign of martyrdom.