Iran’s conservatives have ousted two high-profile officials, throwing President Masoud Pezeshkian’s new, moderate government into turmoil and raising questions about its survival.
The showdown comes as Iran faces a multitude of crises, including energy shortages, skyrocketing inflation, a free-falling currency, the military defeat of most of its regional allies and the return of President Trump and a more hostile U.S. policy.
On Sunday, in the space of a few hours, the Parliament impeached Minister of Finance Abdolnaser Hemmati and the judiciary forced out Mohammad Javad Zarif, the well-known former foreign minister, from his post as vice president of strategy.
The current Parliament and judiciary are controlled by the conservatives, who have warned more impeachments will follow. In Iran’s theocratic system, while there is an elected government, appointed bodies dominated by clerics disqualify candidates they deem unacceptable, which contributed to very low turnout in recent parliamentary elections, and they can block legislation.
Mr. Pezeshkian reacted to the ouster of two of his top allies by delivering an unusually scathing public speech in Parliament on Sunday. He appeared flabbergasted and angry, at times raising his voice and waving his hands, and said Iran was engaged in “a full-fledged war” with external enemies.
“From the day we took over the government, we were confronted with deficiencies in energy, water and power, and on the other hand extreme debts on payments to the agriculture sector for wheat, the health and medical sector, and retirement salaries and so on,” Mr. Pezeshkian said, according to videos and texts of his speech.
He said the government had a massive budget deficit. It couldn’t make its payments to its workers, contractors or retirees, he said, and withdrew $1 billion from an emergency fund just to stay afloat.
Wars with Israel have devastated Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinian group Hamas, both backed by Iran, and have killed the leaders of both groups. Rebels have toppled the government of Syria, Iran’s closest regional ally. And President Trump has returned to office, along with his policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran, through economic sanctions, to curb its nuclear program.
Those external events, Mr. Pezeshkian said, “have added one problem after another to our problems.”
He revealed that as a result of Mr. Trump’s enforcement of tough sanctions, Iran was struggling to sell its crude oil, leaving its tankers lingering idly at sea, and that even friendly nations like Iraq, Qatar and Turkey were not letting Iran access and transfer its cash revenues.
The president was also remarkably frank about his disagreement with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on nuclear talks with the West and Mr. Trump. Mr. Pezeshkian said he favored negotiations, but the ayatollah rejected them, so “it’s over and done.”
“My position has been and will remain that I believe in negotiations, but now we have to follow the parameters set by the supreme leader,” he said, adding that Mr. Khamenei set the policies and the president merely executed them.
Analysts said that Mr. Pezeshkian wanted to shift the blame for the standoff with the United States and its consequences — more sanctions, further deterioration of the economy and even possible Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. Both the United States and Israel have accused Iran of working toward developing nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies, insisting its program is strictly for civilian purposes. The U.N.’s atomic agency, which monitors Iran’s nuclear sites, has said Iran has not yet militarized its program.
“Without being able to push forward economic reforms at home, which is interlinked to reaching out to the West and sanctions being removed, his presidency will be an absolute failure,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran director for the International Crisis Group.
Mr. Pezeshkian, who took office in August, has emphasized a policy of unity with domestic rivals in the name of smoother governance. He even picked cabinet members from across the political aisle, including the minister of justice, defying the advice of members of his own party who warned against trusting conservatives.
But for weeks conservatives have battered his government over the currency, the rial, losing nearly 50 percent of its value against the dollar on the unofficial market since the new government took office. (The official exchange rate, far more favorable to the rial, is available only to a select few.) Prices on consumer goods respond to the fluctuating currency and have spiked astronomically. Iranian media reported the price of rice, a staple of Persian cooking, has increased 100 percent, legumes 200 percent and potatoes 300 percent.
In Tehran, the recent government chaos dominates the front pages of the major daily newspapers with some calling the ousters “political score settling,” and one asking, “strategic mistake or victory of opponents?”
The topic of negotiations with Washington has been a major flashpoint between the conservatives and Mr. Pezeshkian, who campaigned on the promise to improve the economy by negotiating to remove sanctions.
In the weeks following Mr. Trump’s election and his comments about preferring a deal with Iran over military strikes against nuclear sites, Iranian officials from the president to the foreign minister said they were open to talks with Washington. Many pundits wrote front-page essays in Iranian media calling on the government to seize the opportunity of an opening with Mr. Trump.
But hard-liners bent on defeating any compromise with Mr. Trump began a fierce campaign to oust Mr. Zarif, suspecting he would become a facilitator once again in diplomacy with America. As foreign minister, Mr. Zarif spearheaded negotiations for the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, including the United States, that placed limits on Iran’s nuclear program.
Mr. Trump abandoned the deal in 2018, during his first term and tightened sanctions, saying it would lead to lead to a better deal with tougher restrictions on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Instead, Iran’s program has accelerated since then.
Iranian conservatives argued that Mr. Zarif’s appointment violated a law that bars people whose children have foreign citizenship from government roles. Mr. Zarif’s two children were born in the United States and have dual citizenship.
In a statement posted on his account on X announcing his departure, Mr. Zarif said “in the past six months my family and I have faced vicious insults, smears and threats and I experienced the most bitter days of my 40-year career in government, but I persevered with the intent to serve.” The tide in Tehran turned against negotiations with the United States when Mr. Trump signed an executive order tightening sanctions to make it difficult for Iran to evade them, with the aim of reducing Iran’s oil sales to zero.
Mr. Khamenei, who had reluctantly acquiesced to the 2015 deal, and other conservatives saw Mr. Trump’s reversal as proof that the United States could not be trusted.
Mr. Trump’s blowup with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at the White House last week is being presented in Iran as further validation of that view.
Large banners have gone up around Tehran showing Mr. Trump lecturing Mr. Zelensky, with messages that read, “the end of a delusion,” and “the result of relying on the wind.”
“We will not negotiate with America under a maximum pressure policy,” a government spokeswoman, Fatemeh Mohajerai, said on Tuesday. “We don’t want to experience humiliation like Zelensky.”
Mohamad Hossein Ebrahimi, an analyst in Tehran who is close to the government, said in a telephone interview that after the fiasco with Mr. Zelensky, “everyone is wondering if Trump does this with allies, what will he do with the enemy?”
The political upheaval of the past few days has been costly for Mr. Pezeshkian. Some who voted for him and campaigned for him said on social media that they regretted their support and felt duped, once again, by a system that keeps dangling promises of reform at the ballot box but refuses to budge once in office.
Mina Emamvirdi, a media researcher in Iran, wrote on X that Zarif’s ouster “is a sign of diplomacy reaching a dead end in Iran,” and “deepening the crisis of governing.”
Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.
