Excerpt from the Memoirs of Mohammad-Hadi Ardebilli

Selected by Faezeh Sasanikhah
Translated by Kianoush Borzouei

2026-3-18

I registered for Konkour (university entrance exam), following the conclusion of high school. I was accepted into Tehran’s polytechnic (Amirkabir) university and began to study chemical and petrochemical engineering.

There was a building named Jordan in the faculty in which religious students had prepared a small room as a house of prayer and did the noon and afternoon prayers in there. Newly arrived religious students became familiar with other years’ religious students of the faculty in this small prayer house, and a spiritual bonding transpired between them.

I recall that back in the Shah government, the regime had a strong and systematic relationship with the United States and Israel to the extent that the Shah’s regime was acknowledged as America’s gendarme of the region, and many American advisors were inside the country as well. Yet, there was a sense of sympathy with the oppressed people of Palestine and a sense of hatred and enmity towards the criminal and tyrannous Zionist regime of Israel. A regime that created the tyrannous Israeli state by slaughter and the displacement of oppressed Palestinians and the migration of American, European, and other nations jews to Palestine. Still, against the Iranians’ will and beliefs, the Shah’s American regime took the action of establishing Israel’s embassy in Iran. In Tehran, Elal airways’ office was in Villa Street- which was named after martyr Nejatollahi after the revolution- and different political, economic, militaristic and intelligential relations between Iran and the Zionist regime were confidentially expanding.

An incident that happened in that time was a football match between the Iran and Israel national teams in Amjadieh (martyr Shiroudi) stadium. The youth’s attraction to football was the reason behind holding this game, and in order for Zionists to sink in among the youth, the Shah’s regime decided to carry out this match. I remember that on the day of the game, numerous Iranian and Israeli flags, alternatively and with little space between them, were raised at the upper part of the fans’ stand.

Some of the religious and revolutionary youngsters had gone into the stadium alongside the fans. We, as some of the polytechnics’ religious students, went in and sat on the platforms. The match started, and with the help of God, Iran’s national team won the game against the Zionists by a good game and with a 2-1 score. Crowd, with the leadership of students and religious and revolutionary forces, chanted various slogans in favor of Palestinians and against the Zionist regime. The intensity of the populace's emotions was so much that Israeli newspapers wrote that in the hell of Amjadieh, Israel’s football team was defeated. After the game ended, with the guidance of religious revolutionary forces, crowd headed toward the flags and took them all down and burned them. Then a big and glorious rally in favor of the Palestinians with slogans against Israel started from the street outside the stadium toward Villa Street. In the path of the rally, at every point one of the religious revolutionary forces gave a passionate speech in support of Palestinian people and against Israel. Eventually we reached Villa Street and in front of the Elal airways’ office which was burned down with stones and Molotovs by the protestors. It was at this very moment that SAVAK and police forces suddenly attacked the protestors and arrested some, however the majority were able to escape.^[1]