September 3, 2021
In a strong endorsement of President Raisi, the Majlis has approved all but one of his 19 cabinet nominees—the highest success rate for any new president.
The one nominee to fail was the choice for minister of education, the man who oversees K-12 schooling in Iran. He was Hossain Baghgoli, and he was ridiculed by many in the Majlis for being a relative of Raisi’s but for knowing next to nothing about education. He drew support from only one-fourth of the deputies voting, one of the lowest levels of support ever received by a cabinet nominee. Raisi now has three months in which to nominate someone else.
In the past, the Majlis has normally tried to show its power by rejecting a number of nominees for the cabinet. For example, of President Hassan Rohani’s 18 nominees eight years ago, the Majlis rejected three. This time it was quite different.
The key nominees emerged from the vote unscathed. They are:
Hossain Amir-Abdollahian, 57, who was approved as minister of foreign affairs. He was a career Foreign Ministry staffer until he was pushed aside by outgoing Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif three years ago. He was then the deputy minister handling affairs with the Arab world. Zarif shoved him aside by naming him as ambassador to Oman. But Abdollahian then quit the Foreign Ministry and went to work as foreign policy aide to Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani. Moham-mad-Baqer Qalibaf, who succeeded Larijani last year as speaker, kept Abdollahian on.
Javad Oji was approved as minister of oil. He has spent much of his career in the Oil Ministry, with his last post being deputy minister in charge of the natural gas subsidiary under President Mahmud Ahmadi-nejad. So, he brings an experienced hand to one of the main ministries, even if oil exports are now severely constrained by US sanctions. The hope is that sanctions will soon be removed and the oil minister will be in charge of regaining Iran’s former markets around the world. Oji has reportedly often tussled with outgoing Oil Minister Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh, so there has been speculation he might turn things topsy-turvy in the ministry.
Ahmad Vahidi, defense minister in President Ahmadi-nejad’s first term, was approved as the new minister of interior, putting him in charge of the police. Vahidi was charged in Argentina with having a role (while he was the chief of the Qods Force) in plotting the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 people. Interpol has issued a Red Notice calling for Vahidi’s arrest. The Argentine government also issued an angry statement saying Vahidi’s nomination was “an affront to Argentine justice.”
Majlis deputies and the media spent two weeks debating the written plans presented by individual ministers and found many of them too ambiguous and too general. On most matters, they acknowledged that “there are problems” and that “problems need to be solved,” but they did not say how and within what time frame and with what resources they intended to address multiple crises gripping the government.
For example, Ali-Akbar Mehrabian, the nominee to head the Energy Ministry, pledged to boost the electrical supply 35 to 40 megawatts in four years. But many ministers have made similar pledges over the years. Yet, the budgeting officers of the government don’t give the required funds to the Energy Ministry. Mehrabian did not address how he would deal with that overriding problem. Mehrabian was previously the minister of industries and mines under President Ahmadi-nejad from 2007 to 2011. He was widely criticized because he has been convicted by a court for stealing someone else’s invention and registering it under his own name, meaning the cabinet now has a felon as a member.
Many of the nominees had prior experience in the Ahmadi-nejad Administration, a point that drew much criticism, even from conservatives. In fact, one deputy dismissed the cabinet as “Ahmadi-nejad’s third administration.” But no one explained how they could demand experience in government and simultaneously reject those who served under Ahmadi-nejad.
The education nominee, Hossain Baghgoli, came under criticism when the media discovered he is a cousin of Raisi’s wife. Baghgoli is a Shiite ideology instructor, but he has never had a role managing schools or planning education policy. Teachers have said on social media that he is not even well known by his colleagues in Mashhad.
Some sources said Bagh-goli, born in 1979, has been teaching for five years at the Teachers’ University. In the plans he presented to the Majles, Baghgoli promised to choose all his colleagues from among teachers and vowed to lay emphasis on religious and ethical training of students. Like all previous education ministers, he also promised to improve teachers’ salaries. Iranian teachers have been periodically protesting over their unpaid salaries and unpaid allowances in recent years. But Baghgoli didn’t say where he would get the money if budgeteers won’t provide it.
The media paid a lot of attention to the plans announced by Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Mohammad-Mehdi Esmaili, 46. As a minister whose area of work includes the censorship of books, movies, plays and music, his plans appear much stricter than in any previous government.
According to an assessment made by the pro-reform Fararu website, Esmaili has criticized Iran’s already tightly controlled cultural atmosphere and opposed most of what is going on in culture and the arts. Esmaili, who is one of the most hardline managers of Iran’s state television, has criticized Iranian cinema for movies that compromise Islamic values and filmmakers who make films according to the “teachings of the enemies of the Islamic Republic,” not censoring on-demand videos, and allowing the screening of counter-revolutionary films at foreign festivals.
He also charged that “out of the 77 films made in 2018, some 59 promoted the Western lifestyle, 61 featured shameless women, 50 portrayed a disparaging image of Iranian society and 55 advocated lawbreaking.”
In the area of books and the press, the new culture minister called for control of content and demanded a ban on what he called “unethical” publications, hinting he will close more publications.
Meanwhile, he called visits to Iran by foreign musical groups, particularly those from Turkey, “horrendous” and “under the influence of foreign embassies.” He also called for a ban on rock and heavy metal music and demanded that Iranian musicians living abroad should not be allowed to perform in Iran.
In coming before the Majlis to present his cabinet, Raisi said his administration’s first priority would be tackling the corona-virus epidemic. He tapped a 63-year-old ophthalmologist, Bahram Eyenollahi, to be his health minister. Eyenollahi comes with strong if very conservative credentials.
He was one of the signatories of an open letter in January that warned President Rohani against importing vaccines made in the United States, Britain or France, saying they might cause “unknown and irreversible complications” for Iranians who receive them. Shortly thereafter, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi banned covid vaccines made in the US and Britain, but not France.
Some Majlis deputies also criticized the nominee for intelligence minister, Esmail Khatib. But Speaker Qalibaf unusually inserted himself in the debate, saying what is well-known but rarely stated publicly—that the Supreme Leader must approve the nominees to head intelligence, interior and foreign affairs. That halted the attacks on the intelligence nominee.
Iran International said the rightwing Paydari Front, the Ahmadi-nejad wing of the conservative faction, had demanded a share of the cabinet and had its own candidate, Mahmud Nabav-ian, for the Intelligence Ministry. Khatib, the now-approved nominee, has been a colleague of Raisi’s and served the last two years as the counter-intelligence chief of the Judiciary, while Raisi headed the Judiciary.
Interestingly, the intelligence minister is the sole cabinet minister to wear clerical garb; Culture Minister Esmaili completed seminary studies, but does not wear clerical garb.
The new minister of defense is Mohammad-Reza Ashtiani, who has spent his career in the military. He now becomes the second defense minister in a row to come from the regular Army rather than the Pasdaran, suggesting that the regime’s establishment has come to accept the regular armed forces.
