Letter, Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski to Günter Mittag

A. Schalck

Berlin, 22 January 1987

Member of the Politburo

and Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED

Comrade Günter M i t t a g

[Handwritten Note Mittag]: For E. Honecker, Mittag

[Handwritten Signature]: EH [Erich Honecker]

Dear Comrade Mittag!

With reference to the approval received on 28 August 1987 regarding the signing of an arms deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran (40,000 launcher rockets for multiple rocket launcher BM-21^[1], Caliber 122 millimeters) I am informing you about the following:

The supplier of the products is the Czechoslovak foreign trade business “OMNIPOL”. The delivery will probably occur with 20,000 units in February and 20,000 units in June/July 1987. Information does exist according two which the Iranian side will provide a ship on 14 February. The loading will be done in cooperation with Comrade [Erich] Mielke by members of thewMinistry [for State Security]. The loading will take 14 days, the ship will travel for another 14 days. An arrival of the shipments at an Iranian port is to be expected from mid-March.

In the interest of secrecy, the buyer was mandated to provide a ship that does not sail under an Iranian flag. The necessary preparations for her takeover of the products from the GDR border, the domestic transport, and the loading in the Overseas Port of Rostock have been all undertaken.

According to international customs, we had to provide a bank guarantee for the proper fulfillment of the contract over the amount of 2.2 million U.S. Dollars. In case of non-fulfillment of the contract, the latter amount can be claimed by the buyer without reservation. After the bank guarantee was provided, the Iranian buyer did open the letter of credit on our behalf in the amount of 44 million freely convertible U.S. Dollars. Therefore the payment is to be considered as secure.

The deal is resulting in a calculated profit of 10 Million VM [Valutamark, the West German Deutsche Mark (DM)].

Please take note.

With communist greetings,

[handwritten] Alexander Schalck