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President to defend cabinet picks at Parliament today
According to the spokesman of the Parliament’s Presiding Board Alireza Salimi, President Masoud Pezeshkian will have two and half hours to defend his cabinet. Then, five opponents and five supporters of the proposed ministers will deliver speech during the session.
Pezeshkian submitted the list of his new cabinet members to the Parliament on Sunday, less than two weeks after he was sworn in before the country’s legislators.
Abbas Araqchi and Abdolnaser Hemmati are the most well-known figures in his list. Pezeshkian has chosen Araqchi for the Foreign Ministry, who joined the ministry in 1989.
The senior diplomat worked as the former political deputy at the Foreign Ministry from 2017 to 2021, also serving as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator in talks with world powers under former President Hassan Rouhani’s government.
The Iranian president has also picked Abdolnaser Hemmati for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. Hemmati served as the Governor of the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) from 2018 to 2021.
Pezeshkian’s cabinet lineup has ruffled the feathers of a number of individuals in Reformist camp.
The president, however, has defended his proposed ministers and has called on critics to “wait for the cabinet to start work and criticize it based on its performance.”