IRAN: Iran’s labor minister resigned on Tuesday amid daily nationwide protests by pensioners, merchants and workers against soaring living costs.
While it was not clear if Hojatollah Abdolmaleki’s resignation was directly related to the month-long protests, a senior MP blamed his “incompetence” for the unrest.
The semi-official Tasnim news site said his resignation followed “mounting criticism for his handling of the labor market and a meagre rise in the retirement pensions.”
”His failure to create a planned number of jobs and the growing protests over insufficient raises in the retirement pensions had fueled speculations that parliament will impeach him,” Tasnim said in its English-language site.
The Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Security had said it would increase pensions by 57.4 percent to 55.8 million Iranian rials ($177) a month. But pensioners said it was too little too late to cope with years of inflation.
“The level of distrust is unprecedented as we witness protests and anger of laborers and retirees,” senior MP Nasser Mousavi Laregani told parliament. He said pensioners had to forsake their dignity and go to the street to make their demands. The blame lies “squarely on Abdolmaleki’s incompetence,” he added.
Government spokesperson Ali Bahadori Jahromi told reporters the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi was “doing its best to lessen the pressures on the people” and to “find “ways to offer assistance to retirees.”
The majority of the protesters are pensioners and retired government employees who are demanding significant increases in pensions to cope with rising prices.
The string of protests in recent weeks have drawn anti-regime slogans, including “death” to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has blamed some of the unrest on “foreign enemies” seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Social media posts on Tuesday purported to show continued protests in several cities. One unverified post said partial strikes on Monday hit bazaars in the capital Tehran, the central town of Kazerun and in the industrial center of Arak.
Iran’s rial hit a new record low on Sunday, exchanging 332,000 to the dollar, against 318,000 to the dollar on June 1.
Jahromi said Mohammad Hadi Zahedi Vafa was named acting labor minister.
Iranian labor minister resigns amid protests against soaring living costs
https://arab.news/595j7
Iranian labor minister resigns amid protests against soaring living costs
- Hojatollah Abdolmaleki’s resignation followed "mounting criticism for his handling of the labor market," state media reported
- Mohammad Hadi Zahedi Vafa named acting labor minister
Trump says Iran government change ‘best thing that could happen’
- US president's comments come after he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East
FORT BRAGG, United States: US President Donald Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen,” as he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East.
“Seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump told reporters at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina when a journalist asked if he wanted “regime change” in Iran.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” he told reporters.
Trump declined to say who he would want to take over in Iran from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he added that “there are people.”
He has previously backed off full-throated calls for a change of government in Iran, warning that it could cause chaos, although he has made threats toward Khamenei in the past.
Speaking earlier at the White House, Trump said that the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East to up the pressure on Iran.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump said.
The giant vessel is currently in the Caribbean following the US overthrow of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is one of 12 US ships already in the Middle East.
When Iran began its crackdown on protests last month — which rights groups say killed thousands — Trump initially said that the United States was “locked and loaded” to help demonstrators.
But he has recently focused his military threats on Tehran’s nuclear program, which US forces struck last July during Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war with Iran.
The protests have subsided for now but US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, urged international intervention to support the Iranian people.
“We are asking for a humanitarian intervention to prevent more innocent lives being killed in the process,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
It followed a call by the opposition leader, who has not returned to his country since before the revolution, for Iranians at home and abroad to continue demonstrations this weekend.
Iran and the United States, who have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after the revolution, held talks on the nuclear issue last week in Oman. No dates have been set for new talks yet.
The West fears the program is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that reaching an accord with Iran on inspections of its processing facilities was possible but “terribly difficult.”
Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week that he wanted to continue talks with Iran, defying pressure from his key ally for a tougher stance.
The Israeli prime minister himself expressed skepticism at the quality of any agreement if it didn’t also cover Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, 7,008 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the recent crackdown, although rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher.
More than 53,000 people have also been arrested, it added.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said “hundreds” of people were facing charges linked to the protests that could see them sentenced to death.
Figures working within the Iranian system have also been arrested, with three politicians detained this week from the so-called reformist wing of Iranian politics supportive of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The three — Azar Mansouri, Javad Emam and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh — were released on bail Thursday and Friday, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the ISNA news agency.
