Iran: 7 military commanders appointed as provincial governors

The Iranian regime announced yesterday that a former Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander, Abu Taleb Shafeghat, has been appointed as the new governor of the northern Caspian Sea province of Mazandaran. This is the seventh such appointment of a military commander to a provincial governorship since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office as president of the clerical regime in Iran. Six other IRGC commanders had previously been appointed as governors of Kermanshah, Ardebil, East Azarbaijan, Bushehr, Ghazvin and Khuzistan provinces. More than half of the ministers of Ahmadinejad’s cabinet, and according to the state-run website Baztab, more than 70% of deputy ministers are former IRGC commanders.
The religious dictatorship in Iran aims to increase suppression and prevent the spread of popular protests in Mazandaran with the appointment of Shafeghat to the governorship. Mazandaran has been a hotbed of protest to the regime and of support for the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran since the early days of theocratic rule. Thousands of Iranian Mojahedin members and sympathizers have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured and executed in the province. Shafeghat was a longtime commander of the IRGC branch in Mazandaran and played a direct and active role in the torture and execution of political prisoners from the province.
The stream of appointments of brutal members of the IRGC command to key positions in the regime signifies its vulnerability and exasperation in the face of popular protests in its final stage of rule.  The clerical regime’s attempts to delay its own downfall through the installment of military commanders and terrorists at all levels is futile and is reminiscent of marshal law government in the final months of the Shah’s regime.
Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
December 22, 2005