The Return of Trump to the White House Means That the Islamic Republic Now Prepares for the Return of ‘Maximum Pressure’
On March 2, 2025, Iran’s parliament sacked Minister of Economy and Financial Affairs Abdolnasser Hemmati. His firing is emblematic of a major fissure in Iranian politics that many journalists and diplomats ignore. While Western officials obsess about the supposed competition between regime reformers and principlists (hardliners), the 1979 Islamic Revolution heralded the triumph not only of Islamism, but also of a socialist, command economy. Among the Revolution’s theocrats and social warriors, there were scattered pragmatists who favored a freer market-driven approach to economic stewardship. Hemmati’s association with this camp earned him significant enmity among the many Iranian officials who favor a welfare state, culminating in his impeachment.
Whereas in the West, impeachment requires a lengthy process, in the Islamic Republic it is a more straightforward process: Ten legislators can initiate the process, and then the parliament can impeach a cabinet member, including the president, through a simple majority vote. The minister must then appear at a hearing, after which there will be a vote of no confidence. This Hemmati lost, 182 to 89. Iran is not a true democracy, though. The supreme leader massages the process. For him, procedure and law are more suggestions than requirements. Hence, when 79 parliamentarians sought to impeach President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2010, Khamenei called their effort “imprudent,” at which point they dropped the matter. That Khamenei, in contrast, allowed Hemmati’s impeachment to proceed is telling.
Hemmati rose in the ranks of the pragmatic Executives of Construction Party formed by the late President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to promote a moderate line on the reform-hardline spectrum while emphasizing economic competence. Hemmati’s firing after less than seven months shows economic pragmatists and political moderates have lost the argument.
Hemmati was an economic manager for his entire career and considered himself a technocrat. In 2021, he ran for president and campaigned on his economic bona fides. He promised he would improve Iran’s economy by “reducing foreign tensions.” He sought to boost foreign investments and reduce sanctions on oil exports to stabilize the economy; he promised to crack down on “sanctions profiteers.”
This may have gotten Hemmati into trouble. Ali Shamkhani, a former secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council who is a confidant of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his influential sons, has grown rich by profiting off sanctions. Other Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials have also enriched themselves by helping evade U.S. sanctions. They act as middlemen, using dual citizenships in places like the Dominican Republic to create shell companies to channel Iranian oil and its profits.
Read the rest in the Middle East Forum Observer.
