NCRI – The factional feuding over educational credential is not about to leave the mullahs' regime anytime soon.
In a recent episode of diploma scandal, Ahmadinejad's deputy in legal and parliamentary affairs, Mohammadreza Rahimi's Ph.D. degree is in jeopardy.
"His diploma has been acquired in the same way," said Alireza Zakani a member of mullahs' Majlis (parliament) on Wednesday.
"No member of the Majlis would tolerate such behavior. We ask the judiciary branch to follow these matters," Zakani added.
When skeptical MPs questioned the eligibility of Ali Kordan to be Iran's interior minister, he believed he had the perfect riposte; a law degree obtained from one of the world's most elite institutions, the University of Oxford," wrote guardian.
He even flaunted a graduation certificate on university-headed paper purporting to award him an "honorary doctorate of law" for "opening a new chapter" in comparative legal studies.
Kordan, a former revolutionary guard, was approved against strong opposition in a parliamentary vote after Ahmadinejad, in a highly unusual step, told MPs that his nomination had the personal backing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
But pressure on him grew after media outlets followed up allegations by some MPs that his claims to Oxford alma mater status were fantasy and that his academic qualifications amounted to no more than a mid-level college diploma.
Amid a flurry of speculation, Kordan released a copy of his Oxford "certificate" in an attempt to lay the matter to rest.
Dated June 2000, the certificate said Kordan had "shown great effort in preparing educational materials" and bore the signatures of three professors, Edmund Rolls, Alan Cowey and PE Bryant in a awarding him a degree from the university's "faculty of the college of law".
A conservative cleric, Rohallah Hosseinian, would not let go and questioned the veracity of Kordan's doctoral diploma despite the heated debate. In the past, Hosseinian has demonstrated his knowledge of the ayatollahs' many secrets and skeletons.
Despite Hosseinian's allegations and others involving Kordan's "moral problems," the newly appointed speaker of the mullahs' Parliament, former IRGC general Ali Larijani, rejected several calls for a closed session to discuss Kordan's qualifications. He ordered a speedy vote of confidence for Kordan and two other nominees.
