Sardar Rostam Qasemi: Yesterday’s Minister, Today’s Dismissed, Tomorrow’s Outcast
He donned a suit and hung up his military uniform. Now, he commanded the oil fields and trained soldiers like Babak Zanjani who served the enemy more than the homeland. Economic war soldiers intended to bypass sanctions but ended up robbing the nation’s pockets. Eventually, with thick files of various violations, including the failure to deposit money from sold oil by the agency as a proxy for the Ministry of Oil, he ended up in Evin, and to this day, much of these claims remain uncollected. It seems unlikely that there is hope for this money to return to the treasury.
Special Mission on the Field
After the end of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, Sardar Rostam Qasemi took on a new mission on the field: supplying essential and strategic goods, especially for Syria. This mission was not without controversies and cases either. However, in his last effort in the recent elections, he aspired for the presidency but unofficially withdrew due to the Guardian Council, which was not unrelated to Qasemi’s open cases.
Impossible Promise
Finally, after much speculation, he donned the ministerial robe from Raisi’s political table and, contrary to his desire and eagerness to return to the Ministry of Oil, ended up in the Ministry of Roads, Housing, and Urban Development. He was so attached to oil and its ministry that during the confidence vote session, he mentioned the Ministry of Oil several times, which became a media subject at the time.
This time, with impossible and grand promises akin to Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, he made such a great impossible promise that the government and the president are questioned by the opposing current daily about what happened to the one million houses in the first year. But now, with the arrest of his special assistant, Qasem Makarem, by security agencies, ambiguities about the minister himself have resurfaced, and talks of his farewell from the government are heard from political corridors.
To the extent that a channel affiliated with the IRGC on social media reacted to these rumors and came to his defense. Sardar Rostam Qasemi reportedly has an open case in the second branch of the military court’s special prosecutor’s office with Prosecutor Alinajad. The rumor of his terminal illness, spread by his associates, linking the minister’s weight loss to cancer has also been shown to be false, as the minister attempted to reduce appetite and lose weight through stomach surgery.
Amidst all these challenges, the open cases of financial misconduct during his time at the Ministry of Oil cannot be overlooked. It seems that yesterday’s Sardar and today’s minister should be considered tomorrow’s outcast of the government, as it is unlikely Rostam can overcome the self-made corruption monster revealed.
Biography of Sardar Rostam Qasemi
Rostam Qasemi was born in 1964 in the village of Sargah, a suburb of Mehr County in Fars Province. In 1981, Qasemi joined the IRGC and participated in the Iran-Iraq war. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from Sharif University of Technology and a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering through distance learning from Amirkabir University of Technology, Garmsar unit, Semnan Province.
After the Iran-Iraq war, he joined the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters. In 2007, he was appointed as the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters after Abdolreza Abed. In August 2011, following the dismissal of Masoud Mir Kazemi by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he was proposed to take the post of Minister of Oil and received a vote of confidence from the parliament as the last Minister of Oil of the tenth government on August 3. After Qasemi’s selection as Minister of Oil, Timothy Geithner warned that from today, Iran’s Ministry of Oil is under the control of the IRGC.
Continued Biography of Sardar Rostam Qasemi on Wikipedia
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