Commander of the 42nd Combat Engineer Division

The Narrative of Mohammad Reza Eidi Attarzadeh

Mohiya Hafezi
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2025-4-22

The book "Oral History of Sacred Defense: The Narrative of Mohammad Reza Eidi Attarzadeh" written by Mohammad Reza Moshfeghi Khamenei and edited by Abbas Abdolmalaki, was published by the Sacred Defense Documents and Research Center in 2024.

Mohammad Reza Attarzadeh was born on November 23, 1959 in Dezful. After receiving his diploma in 1977, he went to the Ahvaz Institute of Technology to continue his studies in the field of roads and construction. With the outbreak of the imposed war, he carried out engineering activities on the Susa Front as the head of the Andimeshk Construction Jihad. After Operation Fath al-Mobin, he became an official member of the Revolutionary Guards. Among the narrator's responsibilities in the war was commanding the 42nd Engineer Division of Ghadr and participating in the operations of Dawn 8, Karbala 4 and 5, and Khyber.

Combat engineering refers to the set of engineering activities carried out to support combat units. Combat engineering includes the construction of embankments, roads, bridges, and other fortifications to aid combat operations. In the imposed war, combat engineering played an effective role in various operations. As one of the commanders of this area, the narrator played a role in the construction of bridges, hospitals, and also the engineering of the operational area.

This book includes 15 interviews in 7 sections that cover various events in the narrator’s life and activities from childhood to after the imposed war. These sections address the various stages of his presence on the war fronts, his responsibilities and efforts as a combat engineer, as well as his managerial experiences during and after the war.

This book describes the narrator’s life and activities from childhood, the struggles of the Islamic Revolution, and the imposed war. It also discusses some of the narrator’s post-war responsibilities, including his educational and managerial activities in the Revolutionary Guard Corps and his actions in the ninth and tenth governments. Meanwhile, parts of the book are also dedicated to his combat engineering activities during the war. The first part of the book, titled "Birth to Military Service," includes three conversations about his family background and revolutionary activities, his jihadi activities after the victory of the revolution, and the narrator's engineering activities on the Susa Front and military service.

"Presence in the IRGC Combat Engineering Unit to Participation in the Badr Operation" is a title that was chosen, either accidentally or intentionally, for both the second and third parts of the book. The second part is organized in the form of two conversations that deal with the command of the combat engineering battalion and activity in the Khyber operation, responsibility in the engineering unit of the Nusrat and Karbala bases, and the command of the 42nd Qadr Division. The third part also includes two conversations about the preparation of the Dawn 8 operational area and combat engineering in this operation.

Engineering in the Karbala 4 operation and presence in the difficult Karbala 5 operational area are the topics of the conversations in the fourth part of the book. In the fifth part of the book, the narrator also discusses combat engineering in the western and northwestern operations, Dawn 10 operation, Resolution 598, and its consequences.

The sixth part of the book, entitled "Jihadist Management Experiences in War and After the War," includes conversations on the development of combat engineering with the experiences gained in the Sacred Defense, as well as the experience of the IRGC's engineering entering the construction of the country.

The seventh section of the book deals with the narrator's responsibilities after the Sacred Defense. The fourteenth interview discusses his post-war responsibilities in the IRGC's engineering department, and the fifteenth interview discusses his post-war governmental responsibilities.

The interview sessions for this book began in May 2020 and continued until March of the same year. The book is structured in a question-and-answer format. Detailed explanations of the material are provided in the form of footnotes in the main text. High-quality, mostly colored images are used throughout the text, along with caption explanations. Documents and images also conclude the book.

The memoirs of the commander of the 42nd Combat Engineering Division have been published in 384 pages, with a circulation of 1,000 copies, and are priced at 190,000 Tomans (Iranian currency).