Pezeshkian's cabinet picks don't match his call for change in Iran

In Parliament on Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian appealed to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's authority. AFP

Less than a month in office, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has already found ways to disappoint his legion of supporters. One such instance was when he unveiled his cabinet on August 11.

Dr Pezeshkian had explicitly and repeatedly promised that youth, women and Sunni Muslims would be adequately represented in his team. It was an attempt to make up for the fact that Iran has had zero Sunnis and just one female minister since the 1979 revolution.

Despite his pledge to right this wrong, the President has picked no Sunnis and just one woman. At 48, Farzaneh Sadeq, who is due to take over the roads and urban planning portfolio, is also the youngest among his 19 picks. The average age of the cabinet is 60, making it the oldest since 1979.

What’s worse from the reformists’ viewpoint is that it also includes a number of conservatives, including three men who served in the late Ebrahim Raisi’s administration.

Former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who headed the President’s transition team, has resigned in protest. The spokesperson of the Iranian Reformist Front, an umbrella of reformist parties whose endorsement helped Dr Pezeshkian secure his election victory, has expressed disappointment.

But the rationale behind these picks became clear on Wednesday, when the President went to the hardliner-dominated Parliament to seek its confirmation. While there, he repeatedly told MPs that his picks had the approval of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the intelligence authorities.

In essence, the make-up of the cabinet wasn’t his choice alone.

He pointed out that Mr Khamenei had approved several of his choices, including those critiqued by many MPs, such as Abbas Araghchi who is due to take over as foreign minister. He also insisted that his cabinet included people who had served under the centrist Hassan Rouhani as well as those who had worked with conservatives such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mr Raisi.

In other words, he claimed, his was a “national consensus” cabinet.

Farzaneh Sadeq, due to take over the roads and urban planning portfolio, is the only woman in Masoud Pezeshkian's cabinet. AFP

The inability of the hardline MPs to block any of Pezeshkian’s picks is a source of frustration for them

Several MPs protested against the lack of representation. “Can you realise your promise of national consensus while excluding 15 million Sunnis – including Kurds, Baluch and Turkmens?” a Sunni Kurdish MP quipped. Dr Pezeshkian, in a nod to his base, acknowledged that many Iranians were unhappy with the status quo.

That said, there are notable reformists in the cabinet. Incoming finance minister Abdolnaser Hemmati and culture minister Abbas Salehi, both of whom also served under Mr Rouhani, are prominent figures. There are others, too.

Ahmad Meydari, the incoming labour and welfare minister, was labelled by one MP as an extremist for his controversial past as a legislator and for co-signing a harshly critical letter to Mr Khamenei in 2002. The appointment of Hamidreza Zafarqandi, the new health minister, was also met with harsh criticism from some circles for his protest against the disqualification of reformist candidates in the run-up to this year’s parliamentary election.

In the end, Parliament confirmed all the reformists. In fact, it approved all 19 names – for the first time since 2004, when the reformist Mohammad Khatami’s picks got full backing from a reformist-dominated Majlis.

Several names that Dr Pezeshkian put forth even secured more than 90 per cent of the vote, with Brig Gen Aziz Nasirzadeh, the incoming defence minister, getting 281 out of the 288 votes – the most in the Islamic Republic’s history. As a former air force commander who flew sorties during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Gen Aziz Nasirzadeh is popular across the political spectrum.

The inability of the hardline MPs to block any of Dr Pezeshkian’s picks is undoubtedly a source of frustration for them.

The President’s presentation, especially his appeal to Mr Khamenei’s authority, clearly worked. But his success was possible also because of Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s efforts – to help identify some of the cabinet picks as well as to marshal the votes in Parliament. By doing so, Mr Ghalibaf has gone from being a one-time election rival of the President to an ally of his. His decision to aid the President stems in part due to his opposition to many of the hardliners in his own camp. This is an interesting development, as both figures appear to have formed an alliance aimed at prioritising good governance over getting caught up in the demands being made by reformists as well as hardliners.

A rally in Tehran last November illustrates Iran's ties to Hezbollah. The new administration wants better relations with the West, but it says it will continue to support its allies across the Middle East. EPA

Several critics of the hardliners have welcomed this new partnership. “All lovers of Iran should know that this country will only see days of calm when extremists have been isolated in every field,” the centrist news outlet Asr Iran wrote. “Pezeshkian’s government is the last hope for the Iranian nation to free itself from the current adverse conditions.”

Of course, such pronouncements risk being exaggerated, as Dr Pezeshkian faces a tall order.

For example, Mr Araghchi, the new foreign minister, has promised to get international sanctions against Iran lifted and to improve the country’s ties with the world, a goal that is key to the President’s economic vision. And yet the new administration insists on continuing to support the Axis of Resistance militias and pursue a broadly anti-western foreign policy.

In Parliament this week, Dr Pezeshkian provided a list of challenges that the country faces, including corruption, poor relations with the rest of the region and the crippling sanctions. He pointed out that Iran was using less than 1 per cent of its capacities despite being at the “strategic core of global energy resources”.

Beyond pointing out the problems, however, he offered few solutions. But in a recent conversation, the exiled former MP Fatemeh Haghighatjoo told me that she was willing to give the new cabinet a chance.

“I’ll judge this government based on what it will do,” she said. “Let’s see if [for example] he’ll stop the enforcement of the mandatory hijab. We must give the cabinet at least six months to see what it can do.”