August 3, 2010

Planet Iran editorial

Hassan Kazemi-Ghomi, recently returned to Iran after a six-year assignment as Iranian ambassador to Iraq.  Hassan Danaei-Far will be replacing him as the new ambassador. Danaei-Far, like his predecessor is not a diplomat but he is among the top ranking members of the Revolutionary Guards and happens to be born in Baghdad and is among the most notorious members of the guards elite Quds Brigade.

Today, a noticeable number of the ruling elite of the Iranian regime are either born in Iraq or are thought to have major Iraqi affiliations.

The five Larijani brothers, sons of the Grand Ayatollah Hashem Amoli, all of  whom hold some of the most powerful positions in Iran have been referred to by American journalist, Robin Wright, as the “Kennedys of Iran”. They each hold some of the highest positions in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the Iranian regime. Four of the five brothers were born in Najaf.

Ali Larijani, is the chairman of the Iranian Parliament (Majles) and previously Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. He is said to have a Bachelor of Science in computer science and math from Tehran’s Sharif University and a masters degree in Western Philosophy from Tehran University.

Sadegh is the head of the Iranian judiciary though his education and scholarship is said to be unclear. According to the Iranian constitution, the head of the judiciary is required to at least be a Mojtahed but he is said to neither have the experience nor the ranking to hold his current position. In fact Sadegh was a up until the time he replaced, the former head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi who stepped down unexpectedly in late June 2009.

Mohammad-Javad is interestingly, the head of the human rights council of the Supreme Leader and director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics and Math and is a graduate of Berkeley.

The forth of the five brothers, Javad-Fazel, is the Chancellor of the Payam’eh Nour University in Tehran and was previously the Iranian embassy’s cultural attaché in Ottowa. which has claimed to be a non-governmental organization that supports scholars and others interested in Iranian culture.

Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi who, as mentioned above, is the former head of the Iranian judiciary was also born in Najaf and in fact spent a term as speaker of the Iraqi high parliament. In fact, if he had remained in that position, he could have been among the top ranking members of the Iraqi high parliament and a leading authority in Iraq.

Other than Ali Larijani who sits in the highest position in the Iranian Parliament, the new head of the Supreme National Security Council, Alaeddin Boroujerdi was also born in Iraq. Boroujerdi is among the Iranian regime authorities who vehemently supported the violent suppression of the protesters following the fraudulent June 2009 election. Boroujerdi is among those who Saddam Hossein deported to Iran, from Iraq following the 1979 Khomeinist revolution.

Mohammad-Reza Naghdi, the Basij militia commander is also said to be Iraqi-born and during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war was a commander of the Badr Brigade.

The Badr Brigade was an Iranian-trained wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the most powerful Shiite party in Iraq. The organization was built by Iraqi Shiite defectors and soldiers captured by Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Its members were funded, trained, and equipped by the Revolutionary Guard. Since the 2003 Iraq invasion, the group has changed its name to the Badr Organization and though it claims to be involved in the reconstruction of Iraq, it has remained armed, and today operates mainly in Shiite-controlled southern Iraq, where a number of regional governments are dominated by SCIRI representatives. SCIRI openly advocates the creation of a separate, Shiite-run region comprising nine oil-rich provinces in southern Iraq. Badr fighters have repeatedly clashed with British forces in Basra and Mahdi Army forces in the region.