The story of the former Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade is endless
The story of the former Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade is endless. These were the last words of Seyed Reza Fatemi Amin, the Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade in Ebrahim Raisi’s government, at the end of his defense speech in the parliamentary session on May 1, 2023. He intended to influence the representatives’ vote to remain a minister, but it didn’t work, and the ministerial robe, which had been granted to him with 205 votes, was taken off him. Now, only 16 months later, according to the judiciary spokesperson, he has been summoned regarding the Debsh Tea case, preliminary investigations have been conducted, and he has been released on bail.
Although he did not succeed in escaping the impeachment by the representatives that day and lost his ministry, Mr. Raisi, in a gesture of goodwill, appointed him as his economic manager in Astan Quds Razavi, and until the end of the government, he was considered a member of that group as the President’s advisor on production monitoring. This group created surprise after surprise over three years.
Fatemi Amin lost the Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Trade due to impeachment, mainly because of a discussion initiated by Alireza Beigi, the representative of Tabriz, who raised the issue of handing over SUVs to representatives and, more accurately, exposed it. Some feared that voting to retain the minister would be interpreted as representatives opposing impeachment being influenced by the handover. Thus, Fatemi Amin was ousted so that the dismissed minister would have suffered both the stick and the onion.
Now, less than four months after the helicopter crash in Varzeqan, and while the new government has just been formed, the judiciary spokesperson suddenly announces that the Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade in the previous government and the former President’s advisor on economic and production matters has been summoned and is now released on bail. This means that if he hadn’t posted bail, his charge was such that he would have been sent to prison. Interestingly, his charge is not about cars or mines but related to the Debsh Tea case. So far, two ministers from the previous government, referred to as the ‘saddled horse’ handed over to the new President, are involved in judicial cases on financial charges, an unprecedented event in the Islamic Republic occurring during the era of those claiming to fight corruption.
The Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Trade is the result of the merger of four former ministries: Industries, Mines and Metals, Heavy Industries, and Commerce, and it was entrusted to Mr. Fatemi Amin, who was four years old at the time of the revolution’s victory. He and his friends came to ensure the revolution wouldn’t fall into the hands of outsiders.
His first job after receiving his bachelor’s degree in electronics at the age of 23 was managing a Quranic institute called Thaqalayn, which organized Quran interpretation and eulogy classes. With this background, he later became the project manager for the Healthy City of Mashhad while pursuing higher education in other fields.
The connection between a bachelor’s in electronics and a Quranic institute and the Healthy City project is, of course, undiscovered, but he was also entrusted with implementing the plan to renovate old vehicles to add more diversity to his resume. Fatemi Amin became a minister in Mr. Raisi’s government in 2021, with a performance that left the parliament, which had approved his ministry with 205 votes, no choice but to impeach him. He managed to escape the first impeachment but was caught and dismissed in the second. However, the former President’s trust in him was such that he appointed him to sit beside him in the government.
Now the question arises, what was his role in the Debsh Tea case? Naturally, since no final verdict has been issued, we cannot judge, and we hope he will ultimately be acquitted. But if Alireza Beigi, the representative of Tabriz, hadn’t raised those issues and he hadn’t been dismissed, would his remaining have been beneficial to him, Mr. Raisi’s government, and the country? Imagine if the car scandal hadn’t been exposed, this wouldn’t have happened, and it shows that instead of insisting on employing individuals based on appearance or religious background, we should enable real representatives of the people to enter the parliament.
Even Massoud Pezeshkian, who is now the President of Iran, was rejected by the executive boards in the previous government to ensure an unblemished purification. If it weren’t for the intervention of supervisory bodies at the Leader’s command, he wouldn’t have reached representation, while now he is the President of Iran.
On this occasion, it wouldn’t hurt to look at what the late Raisi said about his minister. All friends in the parliament and even the impeachment proponents testified to the Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade’s integrity, anti-corruption stance, anti-rent-seeking, anti-unhealthy relations, and anti-mafia nature.
The former President asked whether the performance of the Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade should only be measured by the car issue. Does the Ministry of Industry, Mines, and Trade not have other industrial, mining, and trade sectors? It turns out that it is actually because of other sectors that a case has been formed against Mr. Fatemi Amin over the Debsh Tea. Raisi also reminded in 2021, when introducing Fatemi Amin, that he had an economic responsibility in Astan Quds Razavi and had made the companies’ performance transparent.
Mr. Raisi is not here to see that the minister, whose courage, integrity, and honesty he praised three times in parliament—once on the day of the vote of confidence, the next during the first impeachment, and the third during the second impeachment—and asked representatives not to oppose him solely because of cars but to also consider the growth indicators in production and mining, is now involved in the Debsh Tea case and released on bail.
Perhaps if the merger of the Ministry of Industries and Commerce had not occurred or if the Ministry of Commerce had been revived, he would have been drinking his daily tea and not gone after Debsh Tea, and this should be a motivation for the new President to revive the Ministry of Commerce. Raisi was so displeased with the representatives’ favorable vote for the impeachment of his Minister of Industry, Mines, and Trade, whom he brought from Mashhad to Tehran, that he appointed him as the President’s advisor in production monitoring, a move similar to what Hashemi Rafsanjani did in response to the parliament’s vote of no confidence in the late Mohsen Nourbakhsh, appointing him as the President’s economic deputy to prevent him from leaving the government. However, the position of economic deputy was not vacant in Raisi’s government, so Fatemi Amin became an advisor with two missions.
1. Follow up and monitor the progress of the country’s major and leading production projects. 2. Monitor and assess the success and obstacles facing executive bodies to fulfill the Leader’s directives regarding production growth. Let’s wait a bit to hear the fate of the case from Mr. Jahangir, and if the second minister of Raisi’s government receives a prison sentence for financial issues, a new record will be set that bears no relation to the former President’s descriptions of his two ministers.
I wish one of these two ministers would ask whether with three billion dollars, the entire tea cultivation and industry in the north could not have been transformed. Could this money not have been allocated to the tea syndicate with 100 active tea growers? Was it really necessary to bring the economic manager of Astan Quds to Tehran and make him a minister, and was there not one manager found within the four former ministries?
We hope the judiciary spokesperson announces that, as the former President said, he is clean and transparent. But if it turns out he was dark like Debsh Tea, for God’s sake, let’s end this facade, because sometimes one wonders who these people really are.
