Three senior officers in the Revolutionary Guards were appointed to top roles in Iranian provincial government in the last week, continuing a trend that has accelerated under President Ebrahim Raisi.
On Saturday, October 10, Sardar Yaghoub Ali Nazari, commander of the IRGC’s Imam Reza Corps, received a vote of confidence from the cabinet in becoming the new governor of Razavi Khorasan province.
The cabinet also rubber-stamped the appointment of Abedin Khoram, the now ex-commander of the East Azerbaijan Ashura Corps, as governor of East Azerbaijan province.
Khoram also previously served as commander of the Khoy Corps on the Iran-Iraq border, and as commander of the Shohada [Martyrs] Corps in West Azerbaijan. At the time of his appointment to the Ashura Corps, Fars News Agency noted he was also a “Defender of the Shrines”: a term used for Iranian military members who fought on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.
Without elaborating, ISNA news agency also claimed that Khoram had “played a role in border tensions in Western Iran”.
Finally on Sunday, October 17, Iranian media reported that long-serving IRGC commander Sardar Mehdi Sabbaghi had been confirmed as the new mayor of Qazvin by Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi, Iran’s new interior minister, after being elected by members of the city council.
Sabbaghi oversaw IRGC operations in four of Iran’s 31 provinces and was also the head of security for west Tehran. He is editor-in-chief of the IRGC-affiliated journal Security Sciences Quarterly.
Serving members of the military and the Revolutionary Guards are, on the explicit order of Ayatollah Khomeini, banned from entering politics. But the supposed fatwa has been flouted many times, and elsewhere circumvented on technicalities, with IRGC officials just temporarily hanging up their uniforms so as to stand for election.
Since Ebrahim Raisi became president, Iran’s elected and unelected state have more or less ideologically converged. The selection of Ahmad Vahidi as interior minister appears to have heralded a tendency in the new administration to appoint ex-IRGC and security officials to political roles.
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