Parliament also dismissed Rouhani's Economy Minister.
The impeachment hearing for Massoud Karbasian, Iran's Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, was held in the Islamic Consultative Assembly on Sunday, September 24, and at the end of the session, members of the parliament voted no confidence in the minister in Rouhani's government for the second time in less than a month.
According to Mehr News Agency, in Sunday's meeting, the impeachment of Masoud Karbasian was approved with 137 votes in favor and 121 votes against, and he was removed from office.
The impeachment motion included 17 items, including "inability to manage the country's economic affairs," "lack of necessary measures in organizing the country's economy," "lack of attention to the resistance economy," "inability to popularize the economy," and "inability to make the country's economy transparent and healthy."
The meeting was held in the absence of Hassan Rouhani, and his first vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, along with a number of his cabinet officials, attended the impeachment meeting.
Among the representatives in favor of impeachment were Hossein Ali Haji Deligani, representative of Shahinshahr, Hadi Bahadori, representative of Urmia, Hedayatollah Khademi, representative of Izeh, and Elias Hazrati, representative of Tehran. In their speeches, they pointed to issues such as stagflation, lack of coordination among the government's economic team, the inability of the Ministry of Economy to draw up a strategy to advance the country's economy, and corruption in various departments of the Ministry of Economy.
However, in defending his performance in the Ministry of Economy, Masoud Karbasian pointed to two issues: corruption and some events inside the country, as well as US sanctions against Iran, and said: The problems that have arisen in the economic sphere are "not under the control of the government" and some others have arisen as a result of "the tyranny of the ruling system."
Following its withdrawal from the JCPOA, the US government implemented the first phase of the return of previous sanctions on August 6, and is scheduled to implement the second phase on November 13.
Over the past year, severe instability in the Iranian currency market, as well as rising inflation and rising prices, have led to numerous protests in various cities in Iran. Most recently, in early August, Tehran and several other cities witnessed protest demonstrations.
Reza Faraji Dana, the former Minister of Science, Research and Technology, was the only minister to be impeached and dismissed in Hassan Rouhani's first administration. In Rouhani's second administration, the parliament voted to dismiss Ali Rabiei from the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare in a controversial session about three weeks ago.
During that meeting, supporters and opponents of impeachment accused each other of financial and administrative corruption in an unprecedented manner, naming specific and explicit cases. Although the speaker of the parliament had said that these accusations would be addressed within two weeks, no news about this was released after that.
Source: Radio Farda
