Iran Focus
In a letter to Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, Ahmadinejad nominated Shamseddin Hosseini, Ali Kordan, and Hamid Behbahani as candidates for the posts of economy, interior, and transport minister respectively.
Kordan, earmarked for the key portfolio of Interior Minister, has a long history in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Iran Focus has learnt.
He was born in November 1958 in a village near the northern city of Sari.
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he became a member of the Islamic "komite" (or revolutionary security force) in the province of Mazandaran. He was also a founding member of the IRGC in Mazandaran Province. He subsequently became a member of the IRGC's leadership council in the province, and later headed the IRGC's Intelligence Directorate there.
In the years after the revolution, Kordan was also the assistant public prosecutor in Sari and Amol.
He later became the public prosecutor of the towns of Hashtpar, Astara and khalkhal.
At one time he became governor of "Ali Abad Katoul" in Golestan province. He was also governor of Gonbad Kavous for some time.
Kordan is a close ally of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and had senior responsibilities in the Office of the President in the 1980s when Khamenei was President.
He has worked closely with the Ministry of Defence and later became Vice-Minister of Oil.
The first Interior Minister in Ahmadinejad’s cabinet was radical Shiite cleric Hojjatol-Islam Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi who was forced to step down in May. Mehdi Hashemi was immediately appointed as caretaker minister.
Pour-Mohammadi was previously in charge of the Special Department for Security and Intelligence in the Office of the Supreme Leader. He is also a former Deputy Minister of Intelligence and Security and a former Military Revolutionary Prosecutor. Human rights groups charge that Pour-Mohammadi oversaw the murder of thousands of political prisoners in Iranian jails in 1988.
