Representatives Expose Ahmadinejad’s Minister

As Majlis voted on Sunday to confirm Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 3 nominees for ministries of Welfare and Social Security, of Education and of Power, nominee Sadegh Mahsuli was once again strongly opposed by representatives but managed to get the confirmation through a small margin.

In the confirmation vote for the chief executive’s three remaining cabinet positions, Hamid-Reza Haji Babai received 217 votes to become the minister of education, Majid Namjoo received 210 votes to become the minister of Power, and Sadegh Mahsuli got 149 votes, while receiving 95 nays and 21 abstentions to become the minister of welfare and social security.

This vote came as Majlis representatives had earlier rejected the previous nominees for the same ministries, named Susan Keshavarz, Mohamad Aliabadi, and Fatemeh Ajorloo, forcing Ahmadinejad to present new nominees.

Immediately after the first session reviewing the credentials of the cabinet nominees, representative Reza Bahonar revealed the direct intervention of the supreme leader of Iran for the confirmation of the ministers and said, “if the supreme leader had not made his recommendation, then 8 or 9 of the cabinet nominees would not have been approved by the Majlis.”

Embezzlement Cases Against Former Interior Minister
During the Majlis deliberations to review the credentials of the three nominees, two of the nominees, one for the ministry of education and the other for the ministry of power, did not have any opponents, an unprecedented event in the Majlis. Contrary to that, Sadegh Mahsuli the former minister of interior who ran Ahmadinejad’s 2009 campaign had plenty of opponents.

The first one was Yunes Assadi, the representative from Meshkinshahr who said, “There are a number of lawsuits in the province of Ardebil over Sadegh Mahsuli’s role in illegally swapping oil for the republic of Azerbaijan and Nakhjavan.”

The second opponent for Mahsuli’s confirmation was Mehdi Sanai, a member of the minority faction of the Majlis who made a reference to the recent events during the June 12 presidential elections and said, “During the time he was the minister of interior, he (i.e. Mahsuli) was the weakest minister in his relations with the Majlis. With proper and timely communication and confidence building, the ministry of interior could have prevented some of the events and distrust that came up during the elections.”

These two opponents of the nominee were supplanted by a third one, Ali Motahari, who is a member of the Principalist faction (the same ideological group as the president himself) and who strongly opposed Mahsuli’s nomination. In his remarks, Motahari mentioned Mahsuli’s mismanagement and his wealth and said, “Such wealth is not accumulated normally (i.e. legally).”

“The manner in which the last presidential elections were handled at the ministry of interior was such that the fake claims of rigging found resonance among a section of the population in society,” he said.

Mentioning the attack of Tehran University’s dormitory by plain-clothesmen and law enforcement personnel, and the atrocities committed at Kahrizak detention center which took place under Mahsuli’s watch, Motahari said, “It is not acceptable to simply say that rogue elements perpetrated these acts. The minister of interior should have at the least complained against the perpetrators of these crimes or expressed his regret for their materialization. ”

It should be noted that these criticisms over Mahsuli’s management during his tenure as minister of interior and the management of the most controversial elections took place right after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, as he introduced his cabinet nominees, that Mahsuli’s term as minister of interior was one of the most outstanding periods in his life, and added, “He has done much at the ministry of interior and has carried the weight of the most important ministry on his shoulders, while doing his job properly, honestly and with success.”

Sadegh Mahsuli has been a long-time close associate of Ahmadinejad and is a former commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in West and East Azerbaijan province. In the years following the end of the eight-year war with Iraq, Mahsuli came to massive wealth. When Ahmadinejad was the governor of Ardebil, Mahsuli won a huge oil contract and his wealth amassed to the point that he claims it to be over 160 billion Toman today (approximately Dollars 160 million).