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Iran's Hard-line Parliament Approves All Members of President's Cabinet, First Time Since 2001

Iranian lawmakers attend an open session of parliament during the third day of debate on the 19 proposed ministers by President Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Iranian lawmakers attend an open session of parliament during the third day of debate on the 19 proposed ministers by President Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
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Iran's Hard-line Parliament Approves All Members of President's Cabinet, First Time Since 2001

Iranian lawmakers attend an open session of parliament during the third day of debate on the 19 proposed ministers by President Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Iranian lawmakers attend an open session of parliament during the third day of debate on the 19 proposed ministers by President Masoud Pezeshkian, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Iran's hard-line parliament on Wednesday approved all members of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian's Cabinet, the first time in over two decades a leader has been able to get all of his officials through the body.

The approval marks an early win for Pezeshkian, a longtime lawmaker who found himself catapulted into the presidency after a helicopter crash in May killed his hard-line predecessor.

Getting his officials approved shows Pezeshkian picked a Cabinet of consensus with names palatable to all of the power centers within Iran's theocracy, as opposed to going for controversial choices as well. Former Foreign Minister Mohamamad Javad Zarif, who campaigned for Pezeshkian in his election, later resigned as a vice president for the new leader over the Cabinet selections, The AP reported.

Underlining that point, Pezeshkian immediately posted an image online with him standing next to Iran's judiciary chief, and the country's parliament speaker, a hard-liner he once faced in the election.

“Consensus for Iran,” he wrote in the caption.

Among those in Pezeshkian's new Cabinet is Abbas Araghchi, 61, a career diplomat who will be Iran’s new foreign minister.

Araghchi was a member of the Iranian negotiating team that reached a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015 that capped Tehran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of sanctions.

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the deal and imposed more sanctions on Iran. Pezeshkian said during his presidential campaign that he would try to revive the nuclear deal.

The candidate who received the most support from lawmakers was the country's new defense minister, Aziz Nasirzadeh, who received 281 votes out of 288 present lawmakers. The chamber has 290 seats.

Nasirzadeh was chief of the Iranian air force from 2018 to 2021.

Health Minister Mohammad Reza Zafarghandi received the lowest number of votes with 163.

The only female minister proposed, Housing and Road Minister Farzaneh Sadegh, a 47-year-old architect, received 231 votes. She is the first female minister in Iran in more than a decade.

Dropping proposed ministers has been a tradition in Iran’s parliament, making Pezeshkian's success that much more striking. Former reformist President Mohammad Khatami was the only president who received vote of confidence for all of his proposed ministers in both 1997 and 2001.

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Putin Makes a Surprise Trip to Chechnya 3 Weeks into Ukraine’s Cross-Border Incursion 

In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state-owned Sputnik agency Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov in Grozny, on August 20, 2024. (Sputnik/ AFP)
In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state-owned Sputnik agency Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov in Grozny, on August 20, 2024. (Sputnik/ AFP)
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Putin Makes a Surprise Trip to Chechnya 3 Weeks into Ukraine’s Cross-Border Incursion 

In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state-owned Sputnik agency Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov in Grozny, on August 20, 2024. (Sputnik/ AFP)
In this pool photograph distributed by Russian state-owned Sputnik agency Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) meets with the head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov in Grozny, on August 20, 2024. (Sputnik/ AFP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday made an unscheduled trip to Chechnya, his first visit in nearly 13 years, as Ukraine's stunning cross-border incursion into western Russia entered its third week.

Putin was greeted by Chechnya’s self-styled strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov, before visiting a special forces academy bearing his own name and speaking with volunteer fighters who train there prior to being deployed in Ukraine.

Putin praised the volunteers and said that as long as Russia has men like them, it will be “invincible,” according to reports by Russian state agencies.

Kadyrov said in a post on his official Telegram channels that more than 47,000 fighters, including volunteers, have trained at the facility since Moscow began what it calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Fighters from Chechnya, whose bid for independence after the Soviet Union's collapse led to years of war with Russian government forces, are participating on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine.

Pro-Kyiv volunteers loyal to Dzhokhar Dudayev, the late Chechen pro-independence leader, are the sworn enemies of Chechen forces that back Putin and Kadyrov. The latter joined Russia in the months-long siege of Ukraine’s key port of Mariupol and other flashpoints in the country's south and east.

Also on Tuesday, Putin visited the grave of Kadyrov’s father, former Chechen leader Akhmat Kadyrov, a command post and a mosque in the local capital, Grozny.

At the end of the day, he held talks with the Chechen leader, who announced the republic has “tens of thousands” of reservists ready to fight the Ukrainians, according to Russian state media reports. The reports did not specify whether any of these might be sent to repel Kyiv's incursion into the Russian region of Kursk.

The Kremlin has relied on Kadyrov to keep the North Caucasus stable following years of turmoil. International rights groups have accused Kadyrov's security forces of extrajudicial killings, torture and abductions of dissenters, but Russian authorities have stonewalled repeated demands for investigations.

The Kremlin scrambled fighters from Chechnya to help protect Moscow from an abortive mutiny launched by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin last year, but some commentators warned that Kadyrov’s ambitions could also potentially pose a threat to federal authorities.

As of Tuesday evening, neither the Kremlin nor Kadyrov shared any details about the purpose and timing of Putin’s unexpected visit, with Kadyrov saying only that “a busy schedule” awaited the Russian leader.

Putin later held talks with Kadyrov at the Chechen leader's residence in Grozny.

Before his surprise visit to Chechnya, Putin was earlier on Tuesday in Beslan, a town in the Caucasus province of North Ossetia, where he had his first meeting in nearly two decades with mothers of children killed in the 2004 school attack by extremist militants that left more than 330 dead.

At the meeting, he slammed Kyiv’s incursion into Russia's Kursk region, accusing the Ukrainians of “trying to destabilize” the country.

“We will punish the criminals. There can be no doubt about that,” he said.