TEHRAN, 26 January 2005 — Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, in a rare public intervention in politics, yesterday told the hard-line Parliament to stop impeaching members of reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s Cabinet.
Conservative lawmakers, who won control of Parliament last year voted in October to sack Transport Minister Ahmad Khorram for corruption and mismanagement, failing to tackle mounting carnage on the nation’s transport network and for awarding an airport operating contract to a foreign consortium.
The move was a major blow to the moderate government of President Khatami, which has been left badly isolated after reformists were barred from contesting parliamentary elections 11 months ago.
But conservative deputies have also set their sights on other moderate Cabinet members, including Interior Minister Abdolvahed Moussavi-Lari and Education Minister Morteza Hadji.
The education minister has been accused of favoring reformists in the education system, as well as bowing to striking teachers over wage demands.
But in a letter to parliamentary speaker Gholamali Haddadadel, carried by the official IRNA news agency, Khamenei said such actions were not constructive in the final months of Khatami’s second and final term, which ends in August.
“The impeachment of ministers under the current circumstances when the government is going through the last months of its important mission would have no benefit for the country,” wrote Khamenei, who has the last word on all state affairs.
A message to deputies from Khamenei, also carried in Iranian media yesterday, said that “now that the government is in the last months of its crucial mission, impeaching ministers is of no benefit for the country.”
The statement nevertheless told the Parliament, or Majlis, it did have the right to use its “supervisory tools”.
The education minister, who was expecting to face an impeachment vote in Parliament shortly, thanked Khamenei and said his intervention had removed concerns about the future which had created chaos inside his ministry.
Lawmakers have clashed frequently with Khatami’s government in recent months, questioning foreign contracts awarded in the telecommunications and aviation sectors and substantially revising government economic plans.
Khatami yesterday formally proposed Mohammad Rahmati to head the Roads and Transportation Ministry after lawmakers last month rejected his previous nomination.
