A cut from memoirs of Ayatollah Mousavi Ardebili

UN Resolution 598

Selected by Faezeh Sasanikhah
Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2021-7-13

The presence of Ayatollah Mousavi Ardebili at the top of the Judicial Supreme Council and Iran’s Supreme Court required him to be aware of crucial domestic and foreign decisions, including the subject of the war and the UN Resolution 598:

“The resolution is a detailed discussion part of which I talk about. Maybe, it was two or three nights before the acceptance of the resolution. We were five. Mr. Khamenei, Mr. Hashemi, Mr. Mousavi – the Prime Minister, and me; Mr. Ahmad was also there. We were supposed to go to the Imam to see what his view was. Of course, after the fall of al-Faw town, our situation was somewhat chaotic. I was a little sick. They told me that there was no problem to come despite my illness. We went to see the Imam. A report was given there. Mr. Hashemi went to the fronts more than other ones. So, he gave most of the reports. I was the only person who did not talk because I was sick. In view of the current situation, we wanted to know whether we must accept the resolution; the Imam said “no” frankly and decisively. On the other hand, Tehran was under missile attacks; a shelter had been built near the house of Imam Khomeini (God bless his soul). We told the Imam (God bless his soul), “Why don’t you go to the shelter now that the city is under missile attacks?” He said, “I don’t go, some people have no shelters.” He said, “You go! Don’t have anything to do with me.” We stopped here on that night, and got up and left. My illness also got better little by little. When we got together again, we talked about going to the Imam, maybe he had changed his mind. I was also one of the supporters of going to the Imam. A friend objected to me, "You did not say a word that night. Now that we are here, you are insisting that we go to the Imam, but you do not say a word there." I said that I was ill.

Finally, we were supposed to go to the Imam and we did. The Imam was praying in his house. When we went, the Imam had finished the prayer before we arrived and went inside. The Imam knew why we had come. We went inside; the conversation started again. The Imam said, "I will not do it." When he saw the comrades saying that it was good, he said, "Let them kill us, nothing will happen?" "Every day, many young people are killed on the front, and so are we." I said, "You are saying the best case scenario, because if they now fire a missile and we are killed, the end result is that we have died 5, 6 or 10 years earlier, but they will say about us that they revolted like Hazrat Aba Abdullah (PBUH), but they did not have the strength to confront us and they were killed. Therefore, each of us becomes an Imamzadeh after being killed, and God saves the people. This is the best case scenario. But there is also the worst scenario, ‌ If they come and seize Khuzestan province to Kermanshah and do not advance anymore, they have cut off the oil, and‌ cut off our hands from what provides the people ‘s bread, and do not come to kill us, then we cannot answer the people. If the people say, "Was this what you wanted to do, what should we do if the people mob on us? This scenario is worse."

The Imam said, “What is your suggestion?” Mr. Hashemi who was also a commander at that time, said, “I will accept the resolution, even if the people mob on me, but others must help me.” First, he was supposed to accept the resolution and all of us approve it, and if the crisis was not resolved, the Imam would come to help us. The discussion came to an end here, and we relied on God.