Fatemi Amin, the Minister of Industry, lost the vote of confidence mainly due to a discussion initiated by Alireza Bigi, a representative from Tabriz, regarding the allocation of off-road vehicles to representatives. Some were concerned that voting to retain the minister could be interpreted as influence by opposing representatives, so Fatemi Amin was sacrificed to show that the minister had been removed and faced consequences.
Now, less than 4 months after the helicopter crash in Varzaghan and with a newly formed government, suddenly the spokesperson of the judiciary announces that the former Minister of Industry in the previous government and an advisor to the former president in economic and production affairs has been summoned and is now free on bail. This means that if he does not post bail, the charges against him are serious enough to warrant his imprisonment. Interestingly, the charges against him are not related to cars or mines, but to the tea industry case. So far, two former ministers of the previous government, or the so-called ‘Zeen Horse,’ allegedly involved in financial misconduct, have been handed over to the new president and are entangled in legal cases of unprecedented financial allegations in the Islamic Republic during the era of anti-corruption fighters.
The Ministry of Industry, Mine, and Trade resulted from the merger of four former ministries: Industries, Mines, Metals, Heavy Industries, and Commerce. They entrusted it to Mr. Fatemi Amin, who was a four-year-old victor of the revolution but unfortunately was accompanied by comrades until the revolution fell into the hands of strangers.
His first job after receiving his electronics degree at the age of 23 was managing a Quranic institute called Thaqalin, which focused on organizing Quran interpretation classes and eulogies. With this background, he later became the project manager of the Salam City project in Mashhad while pursuing further studies in higher levels and other fields.
The connection between the electronics degree and the Quranic institute and the Salam City project is not clear, but they also entrusted him with implementing a plan to renovate old cars to diversify his portfolio. In 1400, Fatemi Amin became a minister in Mr. Raisi’s government. Despite an impeachment looming in the parliament, which had previously approved his ministry with 205 votes, he did not survive the second motion of impeachment. However, the former president’s trust in him was such that he issued a decree for him to remain in the government alongside him.
The question arises about his role in the Chay Dabsh case. Since a final verdict has not been issued, judgment cannot be made. Hopefully, he will be acquitted in the end. But if Alireza Bigi, the representative of Tabriz, had not raised those issues and had not been dismissed, would his stay have been beneficial for him, Mr. Raisi’s government, and the country? Imagine if there had been no disclosure of the car scandal. Obviously, this wouldn’t have happened, indicating that instead of insisting on employing individuals based solely on appearance or religious background, we should facilitate the entry of true representatives of the people into the parliament.
The same Masoud Pezeshkian, who is now the President of Iran, was rejected by the executive bodies in the previous government to ensure a clean record, and if it weren’t for the intervention of supervisory institutions under the leadership’s command, he wouldn’t have become a representative, while now he is the President of Iran.
On this note, it’s worth looking at what the late Raisi had said about his minister. All friends in the parliament, even the ones who called for impeachment, testified to the minister’s integrity, anti-corruption stance, anti-arrogance stance, anti-unhealthy relationships, and anti-mafia stance.
The former president had asked whether the performance of the Minister of Industry should only be judged based on the issue of the automotive industry. Does the Ministry of Industry not have other sectors such as mining and trade to consider? In fact, it is because of these other sectors that the file for Mr. Fatemi Amin has been formed. During the tea ceremony for the presidency in 2021, it was mentioned during the introduction of Fatemi Amin that he had economic responsibilities in the Astan Quds Razavi and had made the performance of companies transparent.
Mr. Raisi is not there to see a minister who was praised three times in the parliament for his courage, integrity, and cleanliness. Once during the vote of confidence, then in the first impeachment, and third in the second impeachment. He asked the representatives not only to oppose him for the automotive industry but also to pay attention to growth indicators in production and mining. He is involved in the Chay Dabesh case and is released on bail.
Imagine if the merger of the Ministry of Industries and Mines had not happened or if the Ministry of Commerce had been revived, everyone would drink their daily tea and wouldn’t bother with the tea of the Dabesh. This should be the motivation for the new president to revive the Ministry of Commerce. A president who was so dissatisfied with the approval of the representatives to impeach his own Minister of Industry that he brought from Mashhad to Tehran, that he appointed him as an advisor to the President in charge of production, a move that Hashemi Rafsanjani made in response to the parliament’s vote of no confidence in the late Mohsen Nourbakhsh, appointing him as the economic deputy to the President and the reason for that was that Dr. Nourbakhsh wouldn’t leave the government, but the position of economic deputy in Rafsanjani’s government was not vacant, so Fatemi Amin became an advisor with two missions.
1. Following up and monitoring the progress of major projects and driving the country’s production. 2. Observing and monitoring the success and obstacles facing executive bodies in order to achieve the leadership’s aspirations regarding production growth. Let’s wait a little, we will hear the fate of the case from Mr. Jahanbakhsh, and if the second minister of President Riyasi’s government is imprisoned over financial issues, a new record will be set that has no relation to the descriptions of the former president about 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 couldn’t be transformed. Couldn’t this money be allocated to a tea syndicate with 100 active tea growers? Was it really necessary to bring the economic manager of Astan Quds to Tehran and appoint him as a minister, when among the four former ministries, a manager could not be found?
We hope that the spokesman of the Judiciary will announce that, just as the former president had said, it is clean and transparent. But if it turns out to be as murky as dark tea, by God, they should gather up this facade of pretense because sometimes one wonders who these people really are.
