The Majlis passed legislation in December to create a new Ministry of Sports and Youth. Ahmadi-nejad had vocally opposed the proposal—and then just ignored the law after it was enacted.
Under the law, the ministry should have been up-and-running by April 9. As soon as that date passed, Majlis Speaker began targeting the president for ignoring the law.
Ahmadi-nejad has also ignored the law telling him how to shift from subsidies to cash welfare, but the Supreme Leader silenced criticism of that topic. That may have been why Larijani chose to focus instead on the new ministry.
Then on Sunday, an aide to the president, Lotfollah Foruzandeh, told the Iranian Students News Agency that “doubts” about the new ministry had been resolved and the government would establish the Ministry of Sports and Youth. But Ahmadi-nejad never had any “doubts” about the ministry; he vigorously opposed it.
Before launching his one-week strike, Ahmadi-nejad had sent a letter to the Supreme Leader seeking his backing in the conflict with Larijani. After the strike blew up in Ahmadi-nejad’s face, he retreated. Foruzandeh put it more gracefully: “The issue of the letter from the president to the Supreme Leader is now finished.”
Foruzandeh did not make clear if the Supreme Leader had written Ahmadi-nejad telling him to obey the law, or if Ahmadi-nejad had just seen the handwriting on the wall and conceded defeat.
The vote last December to create the new ministry was seen as somewhat odd given that the Majlis had earlier voted to reduce the number of ministries from 21 to 17. On Sunday, the cabinet decided to merge four pairs of ministries, thus getting down to the required total of 17:
• Oil merges with Energy;
• Labor merges with Welfare;
• Transport merges with Housing; and
• Industries and Mining merges with Commerce.
According to the Mehr news agency, it was also decided that three ministers would be axed from the cabinet: Welfare Minister Sadeq Mahsuli; Industries Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian; and Oil Minister Masud Mir-Kazemi. The Transport Ministry was already without a minister because its minister, Hamid Behbahani, was fired by the Majlis a few months ago.
The curious thing was that in all those cases the more prominent minister of the pair is leaving and the lesser known one is acceding to the merged post: Majid Namju to be minister of oil and energy; Mehdi Qazanfari to be minister of commerce and industries; Ali Nikzad to be minister of transport and Housing; and Abdol-Reza Shaikholeslami to be minister of labor and welfare.
It isn’t entirely clear if the decision to add a Sports and Youth Ministry means the planned total of 17 ministries is now raised to 18 or if another pair of ministries must be merged. The Majlis has not addressed that point, which should have given the president legitimate cause for complaint. But since the cabinet acted to ax four ministries and not five, it would appear it is assuming the new cabinet will now be comprised of 18 ministers.