With Iran already wounded economically and diplomatically, hard-liners forced out two top officials and blocked talks with the United States, freezing President Masoud Pezeshkian’s agenda.
Iran’s conservatives have ousted two high-profile officials, throwing President Masoud Pezeshkian’s new, moderate government into turmoil and raising questions about its survival.
The showdown comes as Iran faces a multitude of crises, including energy shortages, skyrocketing inflation, a free-falling currency, the military defeat of most of its regional allies and the return of President Trump and a more hostile U.S. policy.
On Sunday, in the space of a few hours, the Parliament impeached Minister of Finance Abdolnaser Hemmati and the judiciary forced out Mohammad Javad Zarif, the well-known former foreign minister, from his post as vice president of strategy.
The current Parliament and judiciary are controlled by the conservatives, who have warned more impeachments will follow. In Iran’s theocratic system, while there is an elected government, appointed bodies dominated by clerics disqualify candidates they deem unacceptable, which contributed to very low turnout in recent parliamentary elections, and they can block legislation.
Mr. Pezeshkian reacted to the ouster of two of his top allies by delivering an unusually scathing public speech in Parliament on Sunday. He appeared flabbergasted and angry, at times raising his voice and waving his hands, and said Iran was engaged in “a full-fledged war” with external enemies.
“From the day we took over the government, we were confronted with deficiencies in energy, water and power, and on the other hand extreme debts on payments to the agriculture sector for wheat, the health and medical sector, and retirement salaries and so on,” Mr. Pezeshkian said, according to videos and texts of his speech.
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