Friday, March 21, 2025
Facing growing economic turmoil and a rial that slides daily further into oblivion, the Majlis has responded by firing Economy Minister Abdolnasser Hemmati. He was the first of President Pezeshkian’s ministers to be ousted by the Majlis, and it came just seven months after Hemmati took up the post. The March 2 vote was 182 in favor of ouster, 89 in favor of keeping Hemmati, with one abstention and one invalid ballot out of 273 votes cast.
That meant Hemmati had the support of a mere 31 percent of the 290 deputies. It did not go unnoticed that Hemmati was one of the few Reformists that Pezeshkian had named to the cabinet, while the Majlis is largely stacked with conservatives. After Hemmati’s ouster, many conservative deputies started talking about firing the other three Reformist cabinet ministers. Pezeshkian attended the Majlis session and tried to save his minister.
He acknowledged that the country faces many economic problems but said it was unreasonable to lay all those problems at Hemmati’s feet. “Can one person alone decide and implement economic measures and then we blame him for all the errors and say that, if he leaves, the problems will be solved?” Pezeshkian emphasized that indulging in a blame game would do nothing to solve the country’s economic woes.
Hemmati gave a long defense of what he had done in his seven months and tried to emphasize that things were actually worse before and his policies were pointing the country in a better direction. “In 2018, the country’s economic conditions were much worse than they are now, but we stood firm and withstood the ‘maximum pressure’” that President Trump had imposed then.
Hemmati did not note that in 2018 Economy Minister Masud Karbasian was also ousted by the Majlis. The Majlis was not convinced by either Pezeshkian or Hemmati. Deputy Ruhollah Motafekr Azad, from Tabriz, told the Majlis, “I said earlier that we do not expect problems to be resolved in a hundred days, but people cannot tolerrocketing growth in the price of foreign currencies and other goods must be curbed.
During this time, I eagerly sought to hear the plans of the government’s economic team and the Ministry of Economy in various meetings to control and improve the situation. But I can honestly say that I have not heard any hopeful approach from Dr. Hemmati and the government’s economic experts.” Some deputies accused Hemmati’s critics of scapegoating.
They argued that firing Hemmati would do nothing to address the deep economic challenges. Some commentators said no solution would emerge until Iran had a deal with the United States that would lift sanctions and end Iran’s blacklisting by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
But for many deputies, the main concern was that when Hemmati took office last August the rial had just passed 600,000 to the dollar and seven months later it is approaching 1 million to the dollar
