The comments came from mullah Ruhollah Hosseinian, a veteran security official, who had served in the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security and a security advisor to Mahmoud Ahamdinejad.
Hosseinian told the state-run ISNA news agency that many new cabinet members had served on the Supreme National Security Council and carried out security and intelligence work, adding: “Thank God majority of this cabinet are very security oriented.”
Among the new cabinet members is Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, a former deputy minister of intelligence and a main member of the three-people Death Commission that played a major role in the mass murder of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988.
As deputy intelligence minister and head of foreign intelligence during the period 1990 to 1999, he also played a role in foreign murder plots, and was the mastermind of assassinations carried out under the supervision of Saeed Emami.
According to the state-run Sarat news web site, potential cabinet member Ali Rabi’i, who was deputy of the Intelligence Ministry during the time of Ali Fallahian, has the strongest links to intelligence and security issues.
When Khomeini came to power, Ali Rabi’i joined the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and from the very beginning became one of the IRGC Intelligence Unit’s commanders.
He was the first director general of the IRGC Intelligence Department in West Azerbaijan Province. Afterwards, he became the director general of MOIS Labor Unit, and subsequently he was in charge of the MOIS Legal-Parliamentary Department until 1993.
During Khatami’s presidency Ali Rabi’i was appointed as the Supreme National Security Council executive director and followed intelligence and security matters with Hassan Rouhani.
Sarat news also said Hamid Chitchian, the Minister of Energy, has work experience in security institutes.
Chitchian was commander of the IRGC Intelligence Department in Tabriz and other cities in Azerbaijan Province during the first years of the mullahs’ regime, and officially employed by the intelligence ministry with the founding of the MOIS in 1984.
The news agency also named other former security and intelligence officials in the cabinet, including Ali Younesi former Minister of Intelligence), Hessamodin Ashna (former deputy Minister of Intelligence) and Mohammad Reza Sadeq, who has a similar intelligence background.
