On June 22, Iran’s state media reported a meeting between the chief of staff of the mullahs’ Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and heads of the regime’s several security apparatuses. This meeting was held on June 15 in Mashhad but was made public a week after.
The attendees of this meeting included Ismail Khatib, the Minister of Intelligence and Security; Hossein Salami, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) commander-in-chief; Ahmad Vahidi, the Minister of Interior; Ali Akbar Ahmadian, Secretary of Supreme National Security Council, and Ahmad Golapaygani, head of Khamenei’s office.
The Fars news agency, an outlet linked to the IRGC, reported that Khamenei had urged the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization and the Ministry of Intelligence to set aside their differences and enhance their cooperation.
“The esteemed leader of the Revolution sent a message to the joint meeting between the Revolutionary Guards Intelligence Organization and the Ministry of Intelligence, stressing that ‘intelligence is of importance to this country and one of our weaknesses in the intelligence apparatus is the existing disagreement between the organizations,” the outlet wrote.
The meeting itself and Khamenei’s remarks speaks out:
The level of desperation and disagreement among the regime’s security apparatus
The regime’s critical situation vis-à-vis a restive society and the power of Iran’s organized opposition.
The aforementioned parameters have prompted Khamenei to hold such a meeting and advise his thugs to increase cooperation and avoid disunity. Khamenei’s desperation to consolidate his security apparatus was laid bare earlier this year when he booted Hossein Taeb, the longest-serving head of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization. Following his dismissal, Taeb acknowledged “generational rifts” and “rivalry” within Tehran’s security apparatus and its desperation in facing its organized opposition, or “the enemy.”
Remarks by Salami during last week’s meeting further confirm the “rivalry” between different security systems and the regime’s critical situation. “The MOIS and the IRGC-IO are the system’s two eyes, tasked with showing one unified image, to prevent the system from having political astigmatism.”
Mohammad Shirazi, the chief of staff of the regime’s Commander-in-Chief of the regime armed forces, also warned about the regime’s “enemy,” saying that it “has mobilized all its might against the system and we should be preventing it from implementing its plots.”
Ahmadian, who recently replaced Ali Shamkhani in the regime’s Supreme Security Council, warned his peers about “zooming on each other’s faults” in “this critical situation,” adding that “we do not have time for these issues.” He also underlined the necessity of having a “unified strategy” instead of increasing infightings and disputes.
The enduring rivalry between the IRGC-IO and MOIS, spanning several decades, has frequently sparked significant disputes between these two organizations. As they are led by rival factions within the regime, they have occasionally pursued conflicting operations domestically and internationally, even resorting to purging elements of their rival organization.
However, the recent escalation of rivalries, which prompted personal intervention, is due to a pressing danger posed by the volatile state of society.
Source » ncr-iran