Few Believe Impeachment Of Iranian Minister Will Improve Economy
Although Iran’s Industry Minister Reza Fatemi-Amin was impeached by parliament on Sunday, few believe that it can be a remedy for Iran’s ailing economy.
Although Iran’s Industry Minister Reza Fatemi-Amin was impeached by parliament on Sunday, few believe that it can be a remedy for Iran’s ailing economy.
Jalil Rahimi Jahanabadi told Rouydad24 news website: "Every one of Raisi's ministers we have dismissed has been replaced by someone even weaker." He predicted that someone several times lower in rank than Fatemi-Amin will become the next minister of industry.
Jahanabadi reiterated that it is highly unlikely the next minister would be more experienced, having better plans or being more capable than his predecessor in any other way. He also argued that Fatemi-Amin was a victim of the government's unclear policies.
Without naming Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who usually makes all key decisions without being accountable for them, Jahanabadi charged that those policies are often made by those whose positions are beyond the government's control.
He said: "A thousand presidents like Raisi and a thousand ministers such as Fatemi-Amin will become the victim of those policies as long as the country's strategic policies are not determined."
Jahanabadi said even more pessimistically that a new minister will take office, change all of the ministry's deputies and major managers and before he can control the affairs of the ministry, he will have to be impeached for similar reasons.
Lawmaker for Tabriz, Ahmad Alirezabeigi who had initially charged the former minister with giving 75 SUVs to parliamentarians to avert a previous impeachment motion, said after Fatemi-Amin's dismissal that he has given 147 cars to the lawmakers. Alirezabeigi told Didban Iran website that he has presented evidence supporting his claim to the Public Prosecutor's Office.
He said a document signed by the executive deputy to the speaker of the parliament indicates that he had designated at least 57 lawmakers to receive the cars at a discounted price several times lower than market value. He said the profit for the lawmakers was huge due to the vast difference between the price set by the importing company and the sale price in the market.
Ironically, although Fatemi Amin has been impeached and replaced from his post partly because of the deal about the cars, none of those who have received the cars have been reportedly questioned, indicted or even publicly named.
On Saturday, one day before the impeachment, Alirezabeigi said in a statement published on former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Telegram channel that he had been summoned for questioning by both the Prosecutor's Office and the Board Supervising Lawmakers' Behavior. The channel presented long lists of the lawmakers who had received the car but blackened their names to avoid prosecution for possible libel.
In the meantime, while the controversy over impeachment continues, former government spokesman Ali Rabiei noted in a commentary in Etemad Online website that the campaign against financial corruption should be accompanied by structural reforms before being turned into security and judiciary projects.
Rabiei accused Iranian governments of failing to carry social projects forward. Interestingly, Rabiei himself has been a member of the government in most of the 43 years the Islamic Republic has been in power.
Following Cohen's recent state visit to Azerbaijan, the Knesset members in a letter delivered to Cohen’s office asked the Israeli government to “pressure Iran to stop oppressing the Azeri minority in northwest Iran” based on a request by the Jewish community in Azerbaijan.
Before a scheduled speech at the Anti-Defamation League, Pahlavi strongly condemnedthe action of the Israeli lawmakers.
“The verbal assault on Iran’s territorial integrity by 32 members of the Israeli parliament is completely unacceptable and a service to the interests of the anti-Iranian Islamic Republic regime.”
Also, in a statement published on Twitter Sunday, the diaspora political group (7th Aban Front in Persian) said the Knesset members’ letter regarding “the Azeri minority” in Iran is “a clear case of action against Iran's existence”.
“Solidarity for a Free Iran considers this letter a hostile act against the Iranian nation and strongly condemns it,” the statement said.
“It is noteworthy that the letter of these Knesset members is in sheer contradiction with the statements made by Israeli government officials regarding friendship between the two nations of Iran and Israel during the recent visit of Prince Reza Pahlavi,” Solidarity for Free Iran said.
Prince Reza Pahlavi, a leading opposition figure, had visited Israel earlier this month and met with Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This was the first time a prominent Iranian political figure had paid a public visit to Israel.
The group also stressed its belief in friendly relations with all countries and fighting against “reactionary discourses such as antisemitism” in the post-Islamic Republic Iran and condemned the Iranian regime’s animosity toward Israel but added that they would not allow “any country or political group to take advantage of such principles to spread hate and contentiousness against the Iranian nation.
The Knesset members accused the Iranian regime of “carrying out a policy of cultural genocide by restricting the right of members of the Azeri minority to study and spread its heritage, to teach its language and even to register children with Azeri national names.”
Around a quarter of Iran’s population is Turki-speaking Azari (in Iran the word is Azari – not Azeri), with analysts and activists disagreeing over the closeness of their cultural-linguistic links to their neighbors to the north.
It should be noted that Supreme Leaser Ali Khamenei and many past and current high-ranking Iranian officials come from the Azari community.
The letter said the Jewish community of Azerbaijan is “very concerned” about the persecution of the said ethnic minority in Iran and stressed that the country of Azerbaijan is one of the most important strategic allies of Israel in the region.
“Obtaining international support as broad as possible for the national aspirations of the people of South Azerbaijan (term used by Baku for Iran’s Azarbaijan) will be a fatal blow to the Ayatollah regime, and establishment of the sovereign state of South Azerbaijan,” they wrote.
Supporting the separation of what they called South Azerbaijan from Iran would also be “an appropriate response on the level of political activism to the subversion of the Ayatollah regime” against Israel.
Tensions have been high between Tehran and Baku, an Israeli ally since November 2022 when both sides accused each other of engaging in terrorism and espionage. Tehran has also accused Baku of harboring Israeli intelligence and military elements that plan to use its territory in a possible attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Solidarity for a Free Iran was founded by prominent political activists after a gathering of political and civil activists from the Iranian diaspora in Brussels in late October, less than three months after Mahsa Protests began and spread across the country.
The Sunday statement issued on the occasion of May Day underlined that the Islamic Republic "neither deserves to survive nor it is capable of surviving.”
Decrying the “bloody crackdown” by the regime during the current wave of protests ignited by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the statement said that people from all walks of life including "teachers, workers, filmmakers, artists, and civil and political activists” are against the Islamic Republic.
They noted that the "revolutionary” uprising of the Iranian people is “still alive and moving" forward and no day passes without rallies and acts of protests calling for change.
Referring to the sexual discrimination against women in Iran and the chemical attacks on schoolgirls, they said "Women are deprived of their most basic human rights."
The civil rights groups and labor unions also said the regime "is not able to control rising prices and inflation even for a single week and has plunged a community of 90 million people into poverty and misery in a rich country."
The Council for Organizing Oil Contract-Workers' Protests, which has been one of the main organizers of the current wave of strikes, and workers of the Haft-Tappeh Sugarcane complex – who recently snubbed President Ebrahim Raisi -- were among the signatories of the statement.
The statement came as workers in more than 100 oil, gas, petrochemical and other plants across the country have been staging strikes since April 22, protesting poor working conditions, low wages and rising cost of living. Almost all the striking workers in oil, gas, steel, petrochemicals and other industries, are not officially hired by the country’s oil company or relevant ministries and are working on temporary contracts, risking their only means of livelihood by joining the strikes.
Authorities claim that the strikes are being organized by anti-regime groups, a charge the Islamic Republic often makes to de-legitimize the demands of the workers who earn less than $200 a month. An official at South Pars gas field on the Persian Gulf stated that 4,000 protesting workers will be replaced by new ones.
Earlier in the day, three prominent Iranian labor activists condemned the recent detention of workers calling it "organized brutality" by the regime.
More than 1,600 labor rallies and strikes have been held in the past year across Iran. The Islamic Republic’s security and judiciary apparatus have summoned, arrested and imprisoned dozens of labor activists to stifle dissent.
In their Labor Day statement, the signatories also called for "immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners,” and also cautioned the authorities against “criminalization of political, trade union, and civil actions."
In recent years, as the Iranian National Oil Company has ceded many operations to quasi-private companies, most of the work is done by temporary contract workers with little pay and no benefits.
The so-called private companies are controlled by military or other state entities, or by well-connected regime insiders who quash labor demands by using government security forces.