Iran’s lawmakers fire finance minister

TEHRAN — Iran’s parliament voted Sunday to fire the country’s finance minister amid an economic free fall fanned by America’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal with world powers, dealing another blow to President Hassan Rouhani’s embattled administration.

It’s unlikely that parliament’s dismissal of Masoud Karbasian will stem the downward spiral, with the currency, the rial, falling to new lows against the U.S. dollar amid chronically high unemployment and inflation in the country.

But it shows the Shiite Muslim theocracy’s growing recognition of the anger felt across the country of 80 million, which has seen months of sporadic protests challenging the ruling clerics.

“Over the last year since you became the minister, the dinner table of the people has shrunk to the point of invisibility,” conservative lawmaker Hosseinali Hajideligani of Esfahan told Karbasian during the legislative hearing. “The purchasing power of the people has dropped down at least by 50%. You have made the people poorer every day.”

A narrow majority of 137 lawmakers in the 260-seat parliament voted to fire Karbasian, an economist who became finance minister in August 2017 after Rouhani won reelection. He replaced Ali Tayebnia, who served as finance minister for the entirety of Rouhani’s first fouryear term.

Karbasian sought to defend himself, saying that America had “targeted our entire economy and social fortifications.”

“America is seeking to block the country’s economic vessels to put people under pressure and stir dissatisfaction,” he told lawmakers. “They are after hitting the government and ruling system. You should believe that we are at an all-out economic war.”

Yet even reformist lawmakers who often back Rouhani, a relatively moderate cleric within Iran’s government, lashed at out at Karbasian.

Lawmakers similarly dismissed Labor Minister Ali Rabiei this month. But while Rabiei had served since the beginning of Rouhani’s administration, Karbasian joined only a year ago as the nuclear deal looked increasingly precarious.