As Iranians prepared to celebrate the Chaharshanbe Suri, known as the traditional jumping over fire, President Hassan Rouhani’s government jumped on Tuesday over fire fueled by the conservative bloc.
Ultra-conservative cleric and Chairman of the Iranian Council of Experts Ahmad Jannati blatantly called for alienating government officials and stripping them from ‘revolutionary’ entitlement and their eventual impeachment.
Chaharshanbe Suri is a ceremonial celebration meant to cast off evil in the last Wednesday before Nowruz (the Iranian New Year's day).
Despite the attempts by opponents, Iranian lawmakers voted in favor of keeping the country’s ministers of labor and transportation.
But as the tug of war continues, Rouhani’s government is holding its breath for when Minister of Agriculture Mahmoud Hojjati defends his performance at the impeachment hearing conducted by conservative deputies.
Attempts by the Iranian government in recent days to block the questioning of three ministers in parliament have failed six months after being sworn in.
The questioning of ministers would be a blow to Rouhani’s role, which for the first time faces the specter of questioning in parliament, five years after taking office.
Rouhani chose to go to the council of experts instead of accompanying the two ministers.
Rouhani's opponents have bet on the questioning of three cabinet ministers gaining even more momentum for the worsening unemployment crisis, deteriorating living conditions and the rise in casualties of road accidents in Iran.
At a morning session, Labor Minister Ali Rabiei, whose opponents had blamed him for unemployment rising to about 12 percent, narrowly managed to keep his job after lawmakers in the 290-seat chamber failed to produce enough votes to fire him.
State TV reported that out of 253 lawmakers present at the session, 124 voted to keep Rabiei while 126 voted to fire him and two abstained. One vote was made void because it was late.
Analysts explained the questioning as an aftershock to the earth-shattering popular protests that hit the country in December 2017 and continued till mid-January.
They believe that bringing in ministers for a closer look on their records is simply a move by conservatives to deflect any further criticism of the regime.
Ultra-hardliners close to Supreme leader Ali Khamenei would have then used Rouhani’s ministers as a scapegoat to satiate popular discontent.
But protesters were recorded to have chanted slogans condemning Khamenei’s policies, and not only late-on-delivery promises made by Rouhani’s economy-driven campaign, putting to question how effective questioning ministers would be to calm public anger.
Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Reza Nobakht criticized at a Tuesday presser the insistence of a team of conservative deputies to question the president and his cabinet.
