Excerpt from the Memoirs of Abdolmohammad Raoufinajad

Supporting the Reconnaissance Operations of Hassan Baqeri’s Team

Selected by Faezeh Sasanikhah
Translated by Kianoush Borzouei

2025-9-29

Roughly three months before Operation Fath al-Mobin, Hassan Baqeri told me in one of the meetings held at the Golf headquarters in Ahvaz that two men from the command post were to arrive and conduct a general reconnaissance of the Dasht-e Abbas area. He emphasized that the reconnaissance team would operate directly under his supervision, and that I was only to provide them with logistical support.

The two were Hassan Danaeifar^[1] and Mehdi Zeinoddin, who worked under Baqeri’s command. I had encountered Zeinoddin in weekly meetings and knew him in passing, but Danaeifar I had met only rarely. Both were intelligence officers under Baqeri, apparently tasked with reconnaissance of an intelligence axis directly overseen by Golf headquarters.

This reconnaissance team required a wireless set for communication with us, along with supplying and rations. Their station was to be in the Dalpari Heights. They sought a location from which they could monitor all Iraqi movements across the Dasht-e Abbas region down to Ein-e Khosh. They themselves selected the Tishekan Heights, receiving a jeep and a week’s worth of dry rations. Each week they would return to Golf for bathing and to report to Baqeri.

The access road to this axis was extremely rough. Once, while I was at the Sepah compound in Dezful, Zeinoddin arrived with the jeep and asked for several sacks. Surprised, I asked what he needed sacks for, since fortifications were supposed to be made using the natural terrain. He explained that he wanted to fill the sacks and load them into the jeep to make the vehicle heavier, so that it would move more smoothly over the rugged track. The poor fellows had developed severe back pain; by adding weight, the jeep bumped less and spared them some suffering.

The most significant intelligence influencing the overall assessment of the region came from the western Dezful sector.

At one point, Baqeri himself visited the front at Jisr Naderi. I remember him standing atop the last trench facing the Iraqis, gazing at the Hendeli Canal—the sole feature of the terrain behind which the Iraqis had entrenched themselves—and saying: “If we can capture this area before the operation begins, it will greatly affect the outcome of the battle.”

He also inspected Dasht-e Abbas, and we went together to Jisr Shoja. In the village of Shoja, a school or health center had been converted into our rear base. We arrived there in the late morning and took a brief rest. From Dezful to that point we traveled by jeep, and from there onward to the frontlines we went with local guides on motorcycles.

Even amid the height of battlefield tensions, Baqeri preserved his artistic sensibility. In the Shoja village building, one of the rooms had been designated for logistics. As we prepared to mount the motorcycles to head forward, I noticed Baqeri re-entering the room. I waited, but he did not emerge. When I went back inside, I found him standing on an ammunition crate, camera in hand, photographing the swallows that had built nests in the rafters. He was capturing them from several different angles. It was then that I realized the depth of his artistic nature.

Some time later, he asked me: “Mr. Raoufinajad, did you see the photos I took in the newspaper?” I had not, but apparently they had been published—most likely in Jomhouri-ye Eslami newspaper.^[2]