Iran

Iran's parliament voted on Sunday to remove the country's Economy Minister Abdolnaser Hemmati from office over mismanagement of the economy and a plunging national currency, state media reported.

The parliament has ousted Hemmati in a no-confidence vote almost eight months after President Masoud Pezeshkian appointed his Cabinet.

Over the eight-month period, Iran’s currency has lost close to half of its value against the U.S. dollar, according to unofficial websites, such as alanchand.com.

The Iranian rial now trades at 927,000 to the U.S. dollar, against 595,500 in August of last year.

Parliamentarians opposing Hemmati argued that he had failed to prevent price increases in basic goods such as medicine, food and housing while being unable to control the foreign exchange market, state media said.

Hemmati had prioritized ending U.S. sanctions on Iran and removing the country from the Financial Action Task Force’s blacklist, state media said.

This was opposed by MPs who believe Tehran should focus on "neutralizing" sanctions.

Hemmati's supporters said it was not the right time to remove the economy minister as Iran remained under U.S. sanctions and replacing him would cause further instability, according to state media.

The economy is the top challenge for Iran's ruling clerics, who fear a revival of protests by lower and middle-income communities angry at growing poverty that have erupted since 2017.

U.S. President Donald Trump has reinstated his "maximum pressure" campaign aiming to cut Iran's oil exports to zero.

In the vote, 182 parliament members backed the no-confidence motion on Hemmati, while 89 voted against the measure, according to state media.

Iran’s stock of uranium enriched to near weapons grade has grown sharply since it announced a dramatic acceleration in December and there has been no progress on resolving outstanding issues, two reports by the U.N. nuclear watchdog showed on Wednesday.

The stock of uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile purity, close to the roughly 90% of bomb grade, has been a long-standing concern for Western powers, which say there is no civil justification for enriching uranium to such a high level. Iran says it seeks only peaceful nuclear energy.

While U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has said it plans to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said time is running out for diplomacy to impose new restrictions on Iran’s activities.

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Two quarterly reports sent by the IAEA to member states showed that while the stock of 60% material has grown by around half, there has been no real progress on resolving long-running issues with Iran, including the unexplained presence of uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

“The significantly increased production and accumulation of high enriched uranium by Iran, the only non-nuclear weapon state to produce such nuclear material, is of serious concern,” the IAEA said in a passage that, unusually, was included in both reports.

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The stock of uranium refined to up to 60% in the form of uranium hexafluoride grew by 92.5 kilograms in the past quarter, to 274.8 kilograms, one of two confidential IAEA reports said.

That is enough in principle, if enriched further, for six nuclear bombs, according to an IAEA yardstick. There is enough for more weapons at lower enrichment levels.

One of the reports also spelled out the lack of progress on the outstanding issues such as explaining the uranium traces, which the IAEA has been asking the Islamic Republic to do for years.

“Iran states that it has declared all of the nuclear material, activities and locations required under its Safeguards Agreement. This is inconsistent with the Agency’s assessments of the unexplained nuclear-related activities that took place at all four of the undeclared locations in Iran referred to above,” the report said.

“The Agency is, therefore, at an impasse with regard to resolving these outstanding safeguards issues.”