Iran Revolutionary Guards chief gets new Interior Ministry post

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Nov. 23 – In a significant move to bolster the control of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) over Iran’s civilian institutions, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has approved the appointment of the IRGC deputy commandant as the Number 2 in the Interior Ministry, Iran Focus has learnt. The appointment is to be made public later this week. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 23 – In a significant move to bolster the control of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) over Iran’s civilian institutions, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has approved the appointment of the IRGC deputy commandant as the Number 2 in the Interior Ministry, Iran Focus has learnt. The appointment is to be made public later this week.

Brigadier General Mohammad-Baqer Zolqadr will be in charge of internal security under Interior Minister Hojjatoleslam Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi.

The second-in-command of the IRGC replaces Ali-Asghar Ahmadi for the top Interior Ministry post. Zolqadr will be working closely with another IRGC general, Mohammad Jaafari, who is in charge of the internal security directorate at the Supreme National Security Council. Together with another IRGC general, Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, who was earlier appointed as the chief of the country’s paramilitary police, the IRGC trio will effectively have total control over internal security.

Zolqadr is a protégé and trusted confidant of Khamenei and has had a key role in the country’s security apparatus for years. He is also a staunch ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Interior Minister Pour-Mohammadi a Shiite cleric who was himself the Deputy Minister of Intelligence and Security for some 13 years during the late 80s and throughout the 90s, has turned the Interior Ministry into a huge security and intelligence apparatus by bringing in many officers from the country’s secret police. One of these appointees, Mahmoud Saeedi, is a former senior official in the secret police who personally oversaw the gruesome murders of two Christian bishops and a priest in Iran in the 1990s, and has been given the post of Director General of the Interior Ministry.