Mohsen Rezaei Mirghaed
Mohsen Rezaei Mirghaed was born on September 9, 1954 in Masjed Soleyman, southwestern province of Khuzestan. He is a politician, economist and former military commander, and the Secretary of the Expediency Council. Before that, Rezaei was commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) for 16 years.
Rezaei ran as a conservative presidential candidate in the 2009 elections, coming third with 1.7 percent of the votes. The Guardian Council on 22 May 2013 qualified eight hopefuls, including Rezaei, to run in the upcoming presidential race slated for June 14. A total of 686 hopefuls registered from May 7-11 for the 11th presidential election. The president of Iran is elected for a four-year term in a national election.
Widely seen as a cat’s paw of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he is an the ultimate insider, and an advocate of the need to reform the Iranian economy, if not its political system. Mohsen Rezaei said: “In order to fight against the sanctions and remove them, Iran must speed up its economic growth. The continuation of sanctions for the next twenty years is not in Iran’s interests. Only 30% of the present problems are caused by the sanctions and the rest is due to the mismanagement of the government. The scene of war begins in the alleys, streets, farms, factories, universities, schools and families, and, as in the past, will not be limited to the borders.”
Mohsen Rezaie was born in Shahrivar, 1333, a descedent of the Bakhtiari nomads in a religious and friendly family of Ahlul Bayt (PBUH). He spent his childhood and adolescence in the city of Masjed Soleyman. With the help of several of his peers, he founded the religious association "Religion and Knowledge" at the Grand Mosque of Cheshmeh Ali. After completing elementary education and part of high school education at Sina Mosadsoliman high school, he was ranked ninth in the entrance exam of the Industrial School of the National Iranian Oil Company in Ahvaz. In 1348, he migrated to this city and settled in the Khazayalah or Shcheh area.
While studying mechanical engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Rezaei switched to economics after the Iran–Iraq war, studying at Tehran University, where he continued until 2001, when he received his Phd. He co-founded Imam Hossein University in Tehran and teaches there. The political-cultural struggle with the Shah's regime began from the second semester of the Industrial Conservatory and soon he was arrested by SAVAK in Ahvaz, being prepared for torture and interrogation, while preparing himself for university entrance examinations.
In 1352, at the age of 17, after spending five months in solitary confinement and one month in prison at the general ward of the Ahvaz Ahraz prison, he began a new round of political activities, and at the same time completing his education at the Industrial School of the National Oil Company. This growing movement, after communicating with the fighters of the cities of Khorramshahr, Dezful and Tehran, led to the formation of a cohesive group of partisan and guerrillas that, inspired by verses 172 and 173 of the surah of Mubarak Sahfat (Umm al-Mansurun et al-Jadena Lahm al-Gaalwon), was called the Mansoor crowd.
In 1353, after passing the mechanical engineering of the University of Science and Technology, he came to Tehran and settled in Narmak. In the same year, he got married and worked in the engineering department of the "design" of the Arj and Iran Tire factories alongside the struggle and knowledge of science. With the intensification of the political pressure of the Shah (SAVAK) political force on guerrilla groups, it was necessary to abandon university and industrial labor.
He led a secret life and from the years 1353 to 1357, he helped to organize and expand the Mansouran population to form branches in 7 provinces and 17 major cities of the country. On the eve of the victory of the revolution and the arrival of Imam Khomeini (RA) to the homeland, he was responsible for protecting the life of Imam Khomeini. In 1979, at the suggestion of Professor Martha Mortaza Motahhari, seven Muslim armed groups were merged to form an armed wing to protect the nascent Islamic revolution. He joined the Central Council of the Islamic Revolutionary Mujahedin Organization (MKO) from the Mansouran group. His membership in the organization lasted more than 3 months and in June 1980, with the support of Hazrat Imam (PBUH), he established a unit of information and political studies in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and became a member of the IRGC.
Mohsen Rezaei is closely associated with memories of the bloody war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, thanks to his role at the top of the Iranian military during that conflict. In September 1981, Imam Khomeini (RA) appointed him commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (the 5th Commander of the Revolutionary Guards) and he commanded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the glory of eight years of holy defense. Mohsen Rezaei began his career as the commander of the IRGC at the age of 27, apparently appointed by order of Ayatollah Khomeini despite his youth. He served in this role for 16 years, including during the Iran–Iraq War.
“Our brother, Mr. Rezaei, is a true warrior in the way of Allah. We thank God that he has been active in the battlefield and all other fields since before the war [with Iraq] and since the very first day of the war. He is a highly competent man,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in 1990.
In 1989, following the end of hostilities, Rezaei divided the IRGC into separate Air, Ground and Naval forces and established Imam Hossein University, which remains affiliated with the IRGC. With the help of the engineering units of the IRGC, Rezaei also founded the Khatam-ul Anbiya construction firm in 1989, a military construction organization that has undertaken several large government construction contracts across Iran.
During this period, the establishment of 2 universities of Imam Hussein (PBUH) and the rest of Allah (Ajulullah Farjah) and in order to utilize the capacity of the engineering units of the Revolutionary Guard Corps to help the government in implementing the huge construction projects of the country, personally command Khatam al-Anbia's construction site was assumed.
With the establishment of peace, while changing his field of mechanical engineering to economics, he took a bachelor's degree at Tehran University. The comprehensive study of Mohsen Rezai was published in a book in 1992. At the undergraduate level in economics, he focused his studies on monetary and banking policies and chose his subject matter in his research paper. In September 1997, after accepting his resignation by the leader of the revolution, he was appointed as "Secretary of the Expediency Council". And began initial studies to set up Iran's 20-year vision document. He completed his studies at Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Tehran, assuming responsibility for the Macroeconomic Commission of the Expediency Council. His doctoral dissertation, written in 1379, is published in the form of a book.
In November 2006, an Argentinian judge issued international arrest warrants for Mohsen Rezaei and six other Iranian officials, based on accusations that they were involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center, AMIA, in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. Rezaei’s name was subsequently placed on the official “Wanted” list maintained by Interpol in March 2007. Rezaei himself has always denied any involvement in the attacks. In February 2012, Rezaei’s name was removed from the Interpol list after Argentinean president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner reported that Argentina and Iran would form an independent committee to investigate the 1994 explosions at the AMIA center.
While it was his role as the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that first brought him into the public eye, he moved sideways into the power structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1997, following a decree by Iran’s supreme leader appointing him the secretary of the Expediency Council. This body, chaired by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, is charged with advising the supreme leader and mediating between Iran’s parliament and the influential Guardian Council.
Rezaei oversaw the macro-economic committee during his tenure on the Expediency Council. In addition, he supervised the basic studies that prepared Iran’s Twenty-Year Economic Perspective, a “road map” for Iranian economic, social and political development that was published in 2005.
Mohsen Rezaei is a key and trusted member of Ayatollah Khamenei’s inner circle. In a speech to IRGC commanders in 1990, Ayatollah Khamenei spoke of the depth of his trust in Rezaei: “I do trust in you and like you from the bottom of my heart. If anybody has heard anything but this, you must know he hasn’t understood [what I meant] properly or has been prejudiced.”
At the beginning of the 2009 presidential elections, in which Rezaei was a candidate, he publicaly criticized Ahmadinejad’s comments on the Holocaust, describing them as “not useful” in improving Iran’s international standing and in seeking a resolution between Israel and Palestine. In an interview broadcast on June 1, 2009 on the Iranian news channel IRINN, he said: “We should not just say all the time that we support democracy, and that the Palestinian people should hold a referendum. Instead, we should take action with regard to this initiative. When we come to power, God willing, our first plan with regard to Palestine … We will put aside the issue of the Holocaust and all that, because this should not be part of the political discourse at all.”
Mohsen Rezaei’s eldest son, Ahmad, was found dead in a hotel in Dubai on November 13th, 2011. He had defected in 1998 to the United States, and sought political asylum. He also created a scandal by giving interviews in which he criticized the Iranian government and implicated his father in the AMIA bombing. In 2005, Ahmad returned to Iran and recanted his previous statements. The cause of his death has been described variously by different sources, ranging from homicide to suicide by overdose on anti-depressant medication. Unsurprisingly, it has remained a source of rumors.
The Iranian Grace 1 oil tanker was seized off Gibraltar by UK Royal Marines. The vessel was believed to be en route to a refinery in Syria, which was allegedly owned by an entity subject to EU sanctions against Syria. Mohsen Rezai, the former leader of the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps and secretary of Iran's Expediency Council that advises Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, said on 06 July 2019 that if Grace 1 isn't released, it is the authorities' duty to seize a British oil tanker in response. "If Britain does not release the Iranian oil tanker, it is the authorities' duty to seize a British oil tanker."
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