Report of the Third Meeting of the Specialized Roundtable on Oral History of the Country

Gholamreza Azizi: Oral history adds depth to military documents

Prepared and edited by: Maryam Asadi Jafari
Machine Translation Edited by Mandana Karimi

2026-10-7

According to the Iranian Oral History website, the “Third Meeting of the Specialized Roundtable on Oral History of the Country and the Meeting of Oral History of the Military in Iran” was held on Wednesday morning, September 27, 2026, with the efforts of the Deputy of Science, Research and Technology of the Iranian Army and in cooperation with the Army’s Political Ideological Organization and the Foundation for Preservation of Works and Propagation of Values ​​of Sacred Defense, in the organization’s Martyr Sayad Shirazi Hall.

At the beginning of this specialized meeting, “General Abbas Bayrami,” the head of the Sacred Defense Documents Organization, after welcoming the guests, stated: “By the end of 2025, approximately 825 titles of oral history books had been published in all national collections, whether private publishers, government publishers or the armed forces. However, there is still a lot of potential for recording the oral history of the 8-year war and the recent imposed war, and it will have a large audience.”

Then, “General Mohammad Akraminia,” spokesman for the Islamic Republic of Iranian army, emphasized the importance of oral history and said: “From the first perspective, oral history provides a nation with access to its national historical reserves and treasures, and this is the first achievement of addressing oral history. The second perspective is a little broader than the scope of a nation and a land. Oral history helps humanity. Because many of the experiences of nations are human heritage, and oral history preserves and transmits this heritage. From the third perspective, oral history can reduce the costs of humanity today. If we pay attention to history and oral history, our political, social, and even economic costs will decrease.” Furthermore, Dr. Mehdi Kamous, author, writer and researcher on the types of oral history related to the military, stated: “We have military history, history of militarism, history of military personnel and history of war. These are similar and border each other, and it is important to pay attention to the border of each; which theory each one arises from. When the discussion of oral history of war is raised, it includes military issues, militarism, military personnel and civilians. Oral history of war also includes the oral history of civilian battles. These points are very important. In Iran, we have focused more on oral history of war, which also has its own reasons. Now, two questions arise: When we talk about military oral history, what is the image and idea that is created in people’s minds? What is the nature, philosophy, and function of oral history for the military and what does it do? Oral history is unofficial history and living history, and it seeks out unheard voices. After World War II in the United States, in the form of a very large project, they spoke to 200,000 soldiers, wounded, and survivors of the US Army. The same thing happened in Britain and Australia. What have we done in Iran? Oral history of war has a general umbrella that encompasses all military and civilian matters. In the oral history of the military, the military themselves are our statistical population. Encyclopedias state that oral history of the military or militarism should be in the language of the military. But in my opinion, oral history of the military is not the history of war as narrated by the military. The oral history of the military is for others to talk about the military. If I were to do oral history about the military, I would definitely go to the commanders and soldiers, and in the end, I would go to that individual; unless it is person-centered. But if we say the oral history of militarism, we should talk to both the military and civilians. Because sometimes civilians also do militarism. Like many officials who are not military but do militarism. The oral history of the military means talking to individuals about military issues; with someone who is an expert in this field.

But what has happened so far in our country is a combination of all of these. That is, political and historical issues have been discussed, and this confusion in oral history both has a cause and makes the work difficult in some cases. If someone wants to work in the field of oral history of militarism, the military, and the military, they must separate these. During the 8-year war, we had more than 4,000 veterans, but very few oral histories of these individuals are available. This oral history can be a solid document for defending the homeland. Some steps have been taken in this regard, but it has not yielded results. We have about 18,000 martyrs of assassination by the Mujahideen, whose oral histories have not been conducted. We also do not have oral histories of bombings. Our way of looking at oral history is based on a theory that has dominated us, which is the theory of "great men" and "heroes." Our historians and oralists are involved in it. In the theory of great men, they believe that a person has great genius and charisma, is given a historical opportunity, and is able to bring a nation with him and do a great job. But in the hero theory, the person may not have charisma, but the conditions have been created for him to become a hero. These two theories have changed in Iran and after the revolution. If we went to war men instead of great men and history-makers, now we would have more information about how to fight in the field of oral history. When we go to commanders, we are actually going to politics as well. But when we interview soldiers, social and militaristic discussions are likely to be raised. In the oral history of soldiers and commanders, there is usually a lot of analysis and the amount of memory is somewhat low. So, if we go to soldiers, the aspect of memories will be greater. One of the reasons why oral history is so attractive in the world is that it distances itself from the official tone of history and tells stories. It does not only provide information, but there is also a kind of entertainment in the narrative, and this entertainment does not mean that oral history is unreliable. Of course, oral history contributes to the crisis of legitimacy in history. We have not heard all the voices about the war. Different voices should be heard equally. But it has nothing to do with oral history being a storyteller. In fact, oral history combines information and entertainment.

On the other hand, the tone and knowledge of the narrator must be preserved. How much do we see this point in the narrative of commanders? Is it possible that all commanders speak the same? Oral history must convey the language and tone of the narrator. In oral history, we only seek information and forget the aspects of critical studies of oral history and mostly seek a kind of glorification of individuals. While this is not the task of oral history. Oral history today is part of critical studies. But out of respect, we consider the narrator to have reached the status of a quotation. Now the question arises: “Are we still proceeding like the hero theory? And what is the public’s image of the military?”

“Human,” “Memory,” “Experience,” and “Narrative”; the Main Source of Oral History

Then Dr. Gholamreza Azizi, a researcher at the National Archives and Library Organization, gave a speech on considerations of military oral history and said: “All our efforts to address the oral history of the military or militarism are answers to the questions raised by Dr. Camus. We have about 2.5 million employees in the country, one and a half million of whom are military. The question is whether the military as a society has issues that can be looked at in a special way? Most of the world’s major armies have a history unit. In order to write their own history. So, the historical unit in military organizations, both during and after the war - such as the Sacred Defense Documentation and Research Center - is essential. But with all the considerations that Dr. Camus said, we do not need a war to occur for military oral history to occur. For example, when a military attaché returns from abroad after several years, he can be interviewed about his experiences. One of the best and most original outcomes of oral history interviews is the management of army knowledge; the management of knowledge of retired commanders, Basijis, etc. Sometimes we forget that oral history interviews are both correct from the bottom and from the top. That is, both an interview with a commander and an interview with a soldier are correct. It depends on the genre, group, and class you want to use. For example, if I want to work on the oral history of equipment at the front, I have to go to the Armenian Basijis who were sent to repair cars. At every level, we must conduct interviews correctly.

“Oral military history” is a method of recording and documenting the experiences, perspectives, and narratives of members of the armed forces, which is carried out through active interviews with the aim of gaining knowledge of practical experiences, military decisions, daily life on the battlefields, behind the front lines, and the social and political impacts of military activities. Oral history is the scientific and systematic process of collecting, documenting, evaluating, and analyzing oral narratives related to military structures, events, and experiences, the main source of which is “human,” “memory,” “experience,” and “narrative.” However, oral narratives in themselves are not considered absolute truths. The goal is to produce and complete historical sources; not simply to record memories. Interviews are placed alongside official documents, maps, etc., and make them complete or more expressive. So, the level at which oral history interviews are conducted depends on the subject.

The breadth and diversity of “military oral history”

One of the characteristics of militarism is bottom-up communication. This communication is established between military units through reports and correspondence and does not reflect opinions, experiences, or reasons. Oral history interviews give us depth, and for example, we can ask an army commander why he issued an order or what he was thinking or feeling at that moment. So oral history gives depth to our documents. We think, since we have documents and evidence, why do we need oral history? Only the person who issued that document can interpret it. The specifications of military oral history include "subject"; war, armed forces, operations, organization, military technology and culture, "source"; human, memory and narrative, "method"; in-depth and semi-structured interviews, "time"; recent past, "place"; battlefield, barracks, headquarters, hospital, camp and home, "validation"; internal and external criticism, "output"; archive, text, book, article, documentary and database and "ethics" of informed consent, confidentiality, etc. Of course, specifications such as: source, method, time, output and ethics are the same in any topic of oral history.

The main approaches in military oral history also include "operational interviews", "thematic interviews", "biographical interviews", "end-of-service interviews" and "post-operational interviews", “Operational interviews” refer to interviews conducted live on site during or after an operation. From this perspective, the activities of narrators during the Holy Defense era can be evaluated in the operational interviews section (from the perspective of the time and place of the interview).

“Thematic interviews” are the most scattered oral history interviews. Remember, military oral history interviews or the oral history of the Holy Defense is a subset of thematic oral history. However, the subset of military oral history or the oral history of war can still be subdivided: including oral history of equipment, oral history of medicine, oral history of captivity, etc. Or based on topics such as: units, command, headquarters, and support, and it is not necessary for war to occur.

“Biographical interviews” are in-depth and detailed interviews that cover the professional lives of prominent military personnel. These individuals have valuable insights and perspectives on the changes and developments in their military units and are narrators of the operations in which they participated.

A series of post-operational interviews are conducted after the operation and cover part of the mission of collecting and preserving documents in the field of military operations. This type of interview is intended for today's use. It is called history, but it is useful for understanding today. For example, someone who has served for 30 years and is leaving the service and retiring should be interviewed and talk about the problems and solutions to them. A person who leaves the military unit takes a treasure with him. But it is not necessary to take his biography. I just want to know, what did he do in combat units?

But if we were to create a conceptual model for military oral history, it would have three parts: “military memory” includes military events, individual experience and memory, interviews and reconstruction of reality, “military experience” includes implementation, internal and external criticism and correspondence with documents, and “military study” includes adaptation and analysis, historical reconstruction and knowledge production.”

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