ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian President Hassan Rouhani slammed the country’s armed forces for corruption and virtually acting outside the law.
In a speech to Iran’s top commanders this week on “combating corruption” Rouhani said: “If weapons, money, newspapers and media concentrate in one place there will certainly be corruption.”
His criticism was mainly targeted at the military intelligence of the Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), saying that their power should be curbed.
“We created a Ministry of Intelligence so that the parliament can oversee it, and the ministry should not have armed forces so that we can control it,” he said.
Rouhani said that without proper parliamentary and judicial watch and audit on the army and intelligence the corruption will continue.
“The parliament should have transparent laws and the judiciary should act justly,” he said. “God forbid corruption reaches the judiciary, too.”
Combating corruption was one of Rouhani’s election slogans, mainly directed at former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose government was accused of a 30,000 billion rials ($2.6 billion) money laundering and credit fraud.
Previous Iranian leaders, including Ahmadinejad himself, had also criticized the army, albeit cautiously, for involvement in economic transactions and embezzlement.
During his presidency Ahmadinejad said members of the army were involved in illegal importation of “military, security and intelligence hardware.”
Observers believe that the president or parliament will be unable to act against anyone in the military due to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s support for the armed forces.
The former head of the powerful Council of Guardians, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said in a previous interview with the Islamic Quarterly that there was an obvious “government decision” not to audit the army and that Khamenei had opposed any such act.
“The supreme leader believes that this is not the duty of the Council of Guardians,” said Rafsanjani.
Others believe that current inflation, due to international sanctions, may eventually convince the Iranian leadership to impose a closer watch on the army.
