Summoning of Cabinet Ministers: A Pretext to Expose the Adversary

Rooz Online

The parliament’s summons of president Hassan Rouhani’s minister of science continues to create controversy and arguments. The issue has dragged in members of the cabinet to support of science minister Farajidana while members of parliament who question the validity of the educational degree of the president himself. The accussations and counter-accusations include names of individuals and government agencies that have received special (and what opponents call unlawful) government scholarships and specific academic degrees.

Fars news agency – a hardline news agency affiliated to the clerical army, the Revolutionary Guards - has published a report that appeared on a website – Dana - belonging to the hardline Principlist faction in which the university degree of a cabinet minister is said to be fake.

It appears the person whose academic claims are under question is Ali Rabiei, Rouhani’s minister of labor who is presented as a “prominent security reformist” personality. “He currently prefaces his name with the title of PhD,” the news report wrote.

According to Principlist media, Ali Rabiei was known to be a high school graduate in the beginning of the 1979 revolution. Then in 2005, during Ahmadinejad’s presidency, he held various “positions within the government in the security and executive fields. He acquired his Masters and then PhD during the same period.”

Another letter was circulated in the Majlis yesterday, this one questioning Rouhani’s academic degree. This letter, which according to MP Kamaledin Pirmozen had been written by Mehdi Kootchakzadeh – who has acknowledged it, and implies that the president’s PhD degree is fake.

This member of the hardline Jebhe Paydari (Steadfast Front) group belonging to the Principlists writes that Rouhani had been prefixing his name with the title of PhD since the time he was a member of the first Majlis of the Islamic republic, i.e., in the early 1980s. It then asks whether Rouhani was in fact claiming that title before he actually received his PhD degree years later. Kootchakzadeh even questions how the president received his degree when he was the head of the government and what scholarship did he use.

Prior to Kootchakzadeh, other websites had questioned the originality of Rouhani’s PhD degree and had written that it was not clear whether the president had in fact attended classes at the university from which he claims to have received his degree. In response to this, a video clip was posted by the institution from where he is said to have received his degree showing him going through the graduation ceremony.

Despite these claims and counterclaims, exposes and counter-exposes, Rouhani’s administration continues to defend Reza Farajidana. Rouhani himself defended Farajidana and his management during a cabinet session and called the Majlis summons an “opportunity to strengthen government – Majlis relations.”

Majid Ansari, the president’s deputy in parliamentary affairs also spoke out on the issue and has said, “Even the summons/loss of confidence (of Farajidana) does get the necessary votes, the next appointee will certainly be a person who will not make a change in the general direction of the ministry.”

Farajidana’s summons had been signed by 51 MPs and submitted to the presiding board of the Majlis. The grounds for the summons that were cited in the letter included, “returning some of the discharged university professors back to their jobs, changes to the elections process at universities, appointment of individuals who had a clear record (or participation) in the 2009 events that challenged the presidential election, inappropriately responding to political events and counter-revolutionary activities and allowing some publications that had anti-religious, anti-revolutionary, anti-people, pro-separatist tendencies, and the revival of some extremist groups.”

Farajidana had earlier received warnings from Majlis deputies. MPs had objected to his appointment to head the ministry of science but then postponed summoning him, but a committee of four MPs was elected to pursue issues with the minister.

Rouhani administration supporters have called the summons “politically motivated.” The government’s own mouthpiece, Iran, wrote that the minister was being summoned because he had exposed the names of individuals who had “unlawfully” received scholarships to continue their higher education. This issue of unlawful scholarships embroils over three thousand government employees under Ahmadinejad’s administration.

Some newspapers close to the government had written that a number of MPs and their children, including children of Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi, Ahmadinejad’s minister of science and the head of the education committee of the ninth Majlis were among the recipients of the “unlawful scholarships.”

Even the head of the education committee of the Majlis, Javad Heravi, had announced that ten MPs from ninth Majlis and another ten from the eight Majlis had all “unlawfully” received scholarships.

Prior to the actual summons, MP Ali Motahari had welcomed the summons of the minister of science adding, “It is a good opportunity for him to come and announce the truth and the violations that had taken place in the previous administration, including the 3,000 PhD students who had unlawfully received scholarships.”