The Iranian parliament approved a Revolutionary Guards commander named on a US sanctions list to be the country’s oil minister, an appointment that may give the military group more influence over energy matters.
Members of Parliament confirmed Rostam Qasemi, head of the engineering arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, by a vote of 216 to 22, with seven abstentions, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.
Qasemi, a veteran of Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, is chief of the Revolutionary Guards’ Khatam Al Anbiya Construction Headquarters.
“Qasemi is a son of the revolution,” president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an address to the parliament on Wednesday. “Thanks to his knowledge of the oil industry, he will turn the ministry even more than before to the service of the country and national interests,” Ahmadinejad said before the vote, according to a report by state-run Fars news agency.
Qasemi’s oversight of the oil ministry may give the Revolutionary Guards, the military vanguard of Iran’s Islamic Republic, increased influence over the nation’s energy policy.
Iran is the second-largest producer of crude in OPEC, and oil is its main source of export earnings. International economic sanctions have deterred many foreign companies from investing in the country, contributing to stagnation in its energy industry and project delays.
The new minister is included on a list of Iranian individuals and organisations subject to US sanctions. The US and its allies said the Persian nation is concealing development of nuclear weapons, an allegation that Iran denies.
The US has accused the Guards of supporting terrorism and involvement in Iran’s nuclear efforts.
The Treasury Department froze Qasemi’s assets on February 10, 2010, though he has said this wouldn’t stop from fulfilling his ministerial duties.
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