Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, ran as a reformist candidate. But when he announced on Sunday that his cabinet nominees included several conservatives and only one woman, he faced a fierce backlash, with a high-profile vice president resigning and political allies accusing him of abandoning campaign promises to bring change.
The resignation on Sunday of Mohammad Javad Zarif, who had been appointed vice president for strategy and had led a search committee for cabinet nominations, shocked Iran’s political circles. He had been a prominent face of Mr. Pezeshkian’s campaign, traveling across the country and telling voters to give change a chance. Now, he was abandoning the government in a public display of deep divisions before it was even formed.
In a post on his Instagram account, Mr. Zarif said it had become clear to him that he could not bring about the kind of domestic change that people had expected.
“I am not satisfied with the outcome of my work, and I’m ashamed that I could not adequately achieve what I had promised about representation of women, youth and ethnicities and the expert opinion of the committees,” he said.
Mr. Zarif followed up on Monday with another post on to Instagram, saying that his resignation did not mean he regretted supporting Mr. Pezeshkian or that he had lost hope in the new government, but rather “it means that I doubt whether I can be effective as a vice president of strategy.”
More stunning was the timing of Mr. Zarif’s resignation. As Iran’s former foreign minister, its most seasoned foreign policy expert and the top negotiator in the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, he was bowing out as a possible regional war loomed.
Iran has been threatening to retaliate against Israel for the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran about two weeks ago. Israel, which has not taken responsibility for the killing but had admitted being behind the assassination of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon around the same time, has said that if Iran and Hezbollah launch large retaliatory attacks, it would strike back with force.
“It’s like a bucket of cold water has been splashed on their heads; they had big expectations, but the result has been minimal,” the Iranian columnist Mohammad Javad Rouh wrote on the front page of the Ham Mihan newspaper on Monday about the disappointment of voters and the reformist political faction that had endorsed Mr. Pezeshkian as its candidate in the presidential race.
At the center of the controversy are two key cabinet nominees: the candidates for minister of the interior and intelligence. Mr. Pezeshkian named two conservatives with a long history of brutal crackdowns on protesters, women and dissidents even though he had pledged during debates and campaign rallies that he would reform such heavy-handed tactics.
Esmail Khatib, who was nominated as the intelligence minister, is a rollover from the previous conservative government who oversaw mass arrests and crackdowns during a women-led uprising in 2022 that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police.
The name of Eskandar Momeni, a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, surfaced at the last minute on the list Saturday as the candidate for interior minister favored by the security apparatus and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to two members of Mr. Pezeshkian’s strategic committee who asked not to be named because they did not want to speak publicly about sensitive issues for fear of reprisal.
Mr. Momeni has had leading roles in the security apparatus, including the police and anti-narcotics forces.
The two people on the strategic team said that Mr. Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards did not want to give up the conservatives’ hold on the interior and intelligence ministries, viewing them as essential for controlling foreign infiltration, namely from Israel, and domestic challenges to the rule of the Islamic Republic.
Mr. Pezeshkian has not publicly addressed the criticism surrounding the cabinet. He has said he wants a “unity government” to have less tension and more cooperation and will draw from experienced people in different political factions, including rival conservatives.
The 19 cabinet members nominated include one woman, Farzaneh Sadegh, as roads and housing minister. But the list notably lacked any minorities such as Sunni Muslims and any person from the younger demographics. The average age of the proposed cabinet is 60.
Parliament must approve all the cabinet members, and the dayslong process typically involves each minister addressing the chamber and two supporters and two opponents delivering speeches about them. The session is scheduled for Saturday.
Mohammad Reza Aref, the first vice president and a reformist politician, said that in choosing the cabinet, the priority had been to improve the economy and the livelihoods of people, according to Iranian state media. Mr. Aref dismissed the criticism, saying, “The strategy of choosing managers and ministers in this government is not to pay attention to political thinking.”
Analysts say that Mr. Pezeshkian was expected to make some concessions to appease Mr. Khamenei. The new president had said he would run the list by the ayatollah, who typically weighs in on key cabinet posts. Mr. Pezeshkian also negotiated with Parliament, which is dominated by conservatives, to make sure the list would not be rejected or held up.
Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the former mayor of Tehran and a reformist politician, said that conservative lawmakers had threatened Mr. Pezeshkian that they would withhold their approval if he nominated ministers they did not support.
“He is facing challenges from every side,” Mr. Karbaschi said in an interview with the Entekhab news site.
Still, analysts in Iran said that all the concessions so early on made Mr. Pezeshkian look weak.
“The cabinet that Pezeshkian has put together is inconsistent and incoherent,” Nasser Hadian, a political analyst in Tehran, said in a telephone interview. “Some are acceptable; some not. Some are not qualified for those positions at all. Many of the reformists expected a better cabinet, but the point is that they are not dealing with the restraints that the president is facing.”
Mr. Hadian said that despite all of the constraints the new president was under, Mr. Pezeshkian still represented an opportunity for change, albeit limited in shape and scope, and that many reformists still wanted to given him a chance despite their disappointment over the cabinet.
In other nominations, leadership of the foreign and economic ministries went to prominent reformists with an outlook that says Iran’s faltering economy cannot be improved without a change in foreign policy.
Abbas Araghchi, who was Mr. Zarif’s deputy, was nominated as foreign minister. He was a member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team and is well known among Western diplomats.
Abdolnaser Hemmati, the former head of Iran’s Central Bank and a 2021 presidential candidate, was nominated as minister of economy.
The post Iranian Vice President Resigns, Signaling Deep Divisions as Cabinet Takes Shape appeared first on New York Times.
