Many commentators in Tehran thought the rhetoric had shifted and Behbahani was targeted because he is viewed as being especially close to President Ahmadi-nejad and the Majlis was interested in striking at the president. Behbahani was one of Ahmadi-nejad’s teachers years ago.
The vote is the Majlis was 147 for dismissal, 78 against and nine abstentions—a 63 percent vote in favor of sacking the minister.
Behbahani was the first incumbent minister to be fired by the Majlis in Ahmadi-nejad’s second term, which began in August 2009.
There has been grumbling about Behbahani and stabs at firing him or some other minister in the past. But the effort to sack Behbahani this time just came together after the January 9 crash of a Boeing 727 near Urumiyeh, with the deaths of 77 people on board.
The plane had been trying to land in a snowstorm, had pulled up and was apparently circling when it disappeared from radar screens. No cause for the crash has yet been announced.
But the Majlis took it out on Behbahani.
Poor maintenance is seen as a cause of some crashes. Others are clearly pilot error, as in the case of a plane last year that landed at very high speed, did not touch down until the middle of the runway and overshot the end of the runway by a full kilometer.
The new head of the Civil Aviation Organization has said US sanctions are not to blame because planes are not supposed to take off if any parts are missing. After 30 years of sanctions, Iran is clearly having no problem buying spare parts on the open market or it would have had to ground its Boeings decades ago.
Behbahani was also blamed for the high fatality rate on Iran’s roads, with critics in the Majlis charging that the minister was not serious enough about improving roads. According to police figures, Iran’s highway death toll has fallen a little in recent years despite the growing number of vehicles on the roads.
Neither Behbahani nor Ahmadi-nejad attended the Majlis session on dismissing the transport minister. That evoked further criticism of both men. Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said, “The government has no right to ignore an impeachment session.… They violated the law by not attending.”
Behbahani is one of several senior officials who have been tabbed as plagiarizers, although that did not seem to play a role in his sacking. In October 2009, Transport, an international academic journal, retracted an article Behbahani co-authored with two other Iranians after the French newspaper Liberation showed the text had been lifted from elsewhere.