Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – July 24, 1982

I got up early this morning. I'm feeling better. Since there was no news of last night's operations on the seven o'clock bulletin, I contacted the Kerbala Central Headquarters on the front line. They have an FX line that can be reached directly. It turned out they were not successful, and it was reported that we had a number of casualties, around seven to eight hundred, but they had not received any reports of anyone being martyred. They will provide the details later. All in all, it is an unsuccessful operation. Perhaps excessive pride led to the failure.

[Mr Mir-Hossein Mousavi], the Prime Minister, came with Ahmad-Agha and gave a report on his trip to Algeria and Libya and his discussions with the Imam. Dr [Hadi] Manaf, the Minister of Health, came to see me with a dentist. It was arranged that they would come tomorrow to pull the tooth.

I spent most of the afternoon reading. This morning at four o'clock, a tremendous explosion was heard throughout Tehran and people thought that Iraq had carried out an air raid; it later transpired that the powder magazine of a private match factory in Masgerabad Street had exploded.