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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.
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