Pezeshkian’s cabinet to face tough challenges in parliament

Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian has two weeks to propose his government before a parliament controlled by hardliners and ultra-hardliners who voted for his opponents in the last presidential election.

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At Pezeshkian’s endorsement ceremony on Sunday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stated that cabinet selection is a “joint work of the administration and the parliament” and emphasized the importance of forming the cabinet swiftly.

Rastineh stated, in response to the possibility of reformist influence in Pezeshkian’s government, that the President should not consider himself associated with a “certain political current”.

The so-called ‘Principlist’ majority in the 12th Parliament is divided into two primary factions: hardliners who support Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and ultra-hardliners who ran Saeed Jalili in the elections.

The two factions have split in recent years, and the umbrella name ‘Principlist’, which used to designate all conservatives as opposed to’reformists’, no longer defines a united front.

The conflict between Ghalibaf and Jalili’s supporters on social media during the parliamentary elections earlier this year erupted when Jalili refused to allow Ghalibaf, who had a better chance against Pezeshkian, to represent the’revolutionary front’ in the presidential runoff elections in July.

Pezeshkian may gain some support from Ghalibaf’s camp, which sees Jalili as a far greater threat than the reform-minded Pezeshkian. After Ghalibaf lost in the first round of the presidential election, many of his fans publicly backed Pezeshkian in the runoff election to prevent Jalili from winning.

It remains to be seen how willing Ghalibaf is to work with Pezeshkian and guide his side to defend him and his cabinet from Jalili’s’revolutionaries’.

“Mr. Ghalibaf ought to do everything in his power as the head of the legislature to prevent the radicals in parliament from blocking the government’s path with their insistence on radical behaviors,” Gholam-Ali Jafarzadeh-Imanabadi, a former ‘Principlist’ member, stated Sunday.

Jafarzadeh-Imanabadi claimed that it is time for Ghalibaf to reciprocate the favor to the parliament’s independent side, of which Pezeshkian was a key member. Without their backing, Ghalibaf would not have been re-elected as speaker of the 12th Parliament in March.

There are also two minor groupings of ‘Principlists’ in parliament, composed of moderate conservatives and conservatives. These groups include followers of former President Hassan Rouhani, former Speaker Ali Larijani, the Islamic Coalition Party, and the Association of Combatant Clerics, which is led by presidential contender Mostafa Pourmohammadi.

In recent years, hardliners and ultra-hardliners have driven these two groupings out of power, and many of them supported Pezeshkian in the runoff elections. Ghalibaf can also enlist their services in assisting the Pezeshkian cabinet.

More over two-thirds of the 290 legislators in Parliament are “principlists.”

There are less than 100’reformists’ and independents, mostly from minor areas, on whom Pezeshkian may rely to back his chosen ministers.

Only one of Ebrahim Raisi’s nineteen ministers was rejected by a receptive parliament in 2021. Hardliner and conservative MPs, on the other hand, refused to support several of Hassan Rouhani’s cabinet nominees throughout his two presidential mandates in 2013 and 2017. During his first term in 1997, reformer Mohammad Khatami was able to gain a vote of confidence from a conservative-majority parliament for all of his ministries.