Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was propelled into a crisis on Wednesday after MPs rejected his third nominee as oil minister, the most strategically sensitive post in his government.
Amid a rising chorus of domestic criticism of the president’s confrontational style, the Iranian Parliament, the Majlis, rebuffed his choice of Mohsen Tasalloti for a job that entails control over the lion’s share of the economy.
Tasalloti, a former revolutionary-guard comrade of the president, has been beset by rumours that he is a millionaire with a green card for the United States and has a daughter living in Britain.
Ahmadinejad on Wednesday called the claims ”unjust” and said Parliament’s decision was ”not fair”. But it was clear that the reservations over Tasalloti’s personal shortcomings were little more than a front for a bitter struggle for control of Iran’s key industry between radical Islamist supporters of Ahmadinejad and traditional conservatives backing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic state’s supreme leader and its pivotal religious and political figure.
Two weeks ago, Ahmadinejad’s second choice for oil minister, Sadeq Mahsouli, withdrew because he lacked sufficient parliamentary support to win approval. The original nominee was rejected in August.
With the official deadline for approval of Cabinet ministers expiring on Thursday, the next oil minister of the world’s fourth-biggest producer of the fuel may now be chosen either by the Guardian Council — a religious watchdog loyal to Khamenei, or by the Expediency Council, an organisation headed by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was defeated by Ahmadinejad in this year’s presidential election and has since been very critical of the president’s political performance.
Losing control over the appointment would deal a serious blow to Ahmadinejad, who won the June poll largely due to promises to redistribute Iran’s oil wealth to the poor. It follows speculation that he may be impeached over a controversial political record that has so far included the sacking of four senior Iranian ambassadors and seven state bank chiefs, as well as the removal of a host of less prominent figures and a 25% slump in stock-exchange values.
”We have never before seen this kind of conflict between Parliament and the government, even before the revolution,” said a Tehran-based political analyst, Saeed Leylaz. But ”Iran is earning oil revenues of about $110-million per day, and that is big enough to compensate for the [president’s political] mismanagement.” — Guardian Unlimited Â