Iran’s secret police officers appointed to key posts

Iran Focus: London, Jan. 04 – At least half of the 25 deputy governors appointed by the government of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are officers of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the country’s secret police, Iran Focus has learnt. Seven others are senior officers of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Iran Focus

London, Jan. 04 – At least half of the 25 deputy governors appointed by the government of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are officers of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the country’s secret police, Iran Focus has learnt. Seven others are senior officers of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

Iran is divided into a total of 30 provinces.

The new Interior Minister, Hojjatol-Islam Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, is systematically replacing all the top officials of provincial administrations. Pour-Mohammadi was for years the number two in Iran’s dreaded intelligence apparatus. Prior to his appointment as Ahmadinejad’s Interior Minister, the radical Shiite cleric had been running the Special Department for Security and Intelligence in the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Pour-Mohammadi’s sweeping changes and political appointments have turned the Interior Ministry into one of the country’s most powerful security agencies. The Deputy Commander of the IRGC, Brig. Gen. Mohammad-Bagher Zolghadr, has been appointed as Pour-Mohammadi’s second-in-command, with overall responsibility for internal security.

Khamenei’s recent decision to name Pour-Mohammadi as the Acting Commander in Chief of the State Security Forces gave him complete control over the vast police force of the Islamic Republic.

“Pour-Mohammadi’s reputation rests on two premises: his unrivalled ruthlessness and his unquestionable loyalty to Khamenei”, said Ali Mohebbi, an Iranian affairs writer based in the Persian Gulf city of Dubai.

At least 11 ministers in Ahmadinejad’s cabinet are former senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliated agencies, the para-military Bassij and the Construction Jihad.