Memoirs of Commander Asadollah Naseh

Translated by Kianoush Borzouei

2026-4-9

Commander Asadollah Naseh, deputy commander of Operation Mersad in 1988, was the guest of the 282nd episode of the “Night of Reminiscences” program (July 2017). He had also been among the narrators on the twelfth Night of Reminiscences program in 1993. Commander Naseh related that the account he recounted in 1993 pertained to events preceding Operation Mersad. The first thing I can say, he recalled, is that I was left behind and went to the Allah‑Akbar barracks. Several senior commanders were there; they told me to proceed immediately to Kermanshah because they required me. Almost all commanders—even the commander of the Najaf headquarters, the late Nourali Shushtari—were deployed in the south. In fact, there were effectively no headquarters or Revolutionary Guard commanders in Kermanshah, a circumstance of which I was unaware because I had been absent for forty‑eight hours. When I arrived in Kermanshah, people rejoiced at my survival and urged me to go at once to a command post located at Imam Hossein Hospital, since Mr. Hashemi Rafsanjani, then Deputy Commander‑in‑Chief, was present there.

In attendance at that meeting were myself, Esmaeil Ahmadi‑Moghaddam (deputy of the Hamzeh headquarters), Nasser Shabani (commander of the Fourth Corps headquarters), and Akbar Daneshyar (deputy chief of the Revolutionary Guards’ general command office). We were engaged in estimating the remaining Iraqi forces available for offensive action. There was disagreement among us: I maintained that Iraq had moved an armored division toward Kermanshah, whereas Mr.Hashemi assessed it as a brigade. Based on the forces I had observed in Gilan‑e Gharb and Sarpol‑e Zahab, I speculated that perhaps a full armored division had been redeployed to sustain its operation. We were still debating this when, at about 17:00, word came that a column was advancing from the Pataq pass. Militarily it was peculiar for an unsupported column to move up Pataq in the afternoon; we were uncertain whether they were Iraqis. At roughly 18:10 the report arrived: they were the Monafeqin (the Mujahedin) and had reached Karand.

Let’s see this narrative.

To date, 377 episodes of the Night of Reminiscences focusing on the Sacred Defense have been organized by the Center for Studies and Research on the Culture and Literature of Resistance and the Office of Resistance Literature and Art at the Artistic Sect of Islamic Republic. The next program will be held on Thursday, April 23rd, 2026.

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