Persian → English transcript

May God bless Mr.

Kazemi’s soul, he was the commander of the forces We would go to visit the

projects that Mr. Hajizadeh was working on,

like water transfer from the Dez headwaters,

for example to Qom and Mahallat and those places.

For example, we would go for an inspection,

they had dug a tunnel of about thirty- six kilometers,

they had gone deep into the earth. One day Mr. so- called Kazemi asked Mr.

Hajizadeh and said,“ It was like a factory here, these TBMs and all,

everything was in- house.”

He said,“ If the power goes out, what happens, Mr. Hajizadeh?”

He said,“ Nothing, we just die.”

He said,“ Brother, you madman, why did you bring us to a depth of, say,

thirty kilometers under the ground?”

He said,“ Do not worry, it even has its own generator,

for example it will not have a problem,” he was joking.

From the very first stages of design and production,

the location for deploying and concealing the missiles was of vital importance.

With his experience from major tunneling in

the IRGC’s water supply projects, Hajizadeh put the world’s latest

technologies to use for building underground missile cities. Cities that,

out of enemy satellites’ sight, were breathing in the heart of the earth.

One of the cases where aerospace

played a pioneering role was bringing in equipment

that Sardar Hajizadeh brought from abroad, things like TBMs,

they brought machines that could automatically drill tunnels,

which we needed for the missile cities we wanted to build, because

before that they were working with hammers and drills and those ordinary tools.

He went and brought this machine from outside the country and

they started building tunnels,

they also localized the know- how of that same machine,

and we were able to reverse- engineer the machine,

and for building metro lines they used these machines, a Russian magazine,

one of our friends had lent it to us,

look at this, well, there was a lot of information, including, for example,

discussions about this“ launch from a silo,” launch from a cave,

launch from underground,

these were some scenes we saw and said, well, this is feasible.

Anyway, with one of the so- called tunnels we had in the south of the country,

we came and drilled a shaft down from above,

say if the missile’s diameter with its fins was,

for example, about one and a half meters, we made it, say, three meters— basically

we bored a three- meter tunnel from above and put a hatch on top.

It looked completely natural, and we opened it at the bottom too so it went down,

and from one point we put a hatch so it exited outside.

We said,“ Now this is experimental,

either it will explode right here and we’ll all be killed,

or in the end something will happen.” Nobody would accept it.

They said,“ Sir, it is impossible, it will explode down there,

it will kill all of you.” That was when Mr. Hajizadeh said,“ I am ready,

I will go myself.

I built it after all, I will come and sit here, I will bring my wife and kids too,

I will bring my parents too.

Whatever happens should happen to me,” and the launch was carried out.

That night we recited Duʿa- ye Tavasol there, and the launch was carried out.

So it went out through this hole,

now these cameras that are beside this so- called cave that it is going through,

we had placed various cameras, they captured the footage, when the missile passes,

these cameras melt.

We did the first launch with fear and trembling and with tremendous risk,

Our fear went away, we saw, well, it works, it is really good and very accurate.