TEHRAN: Iran’s parliament sacked the country’s finance minister on Sunday after impeaching him over soaring inflation and a plunging currency, state television reported.

Economy and Finance Minister Abdolnaser Hemmati lost a vote of confidence, with 182 of 273 parliamentarians present backing his removal.

On the black market on Sunday, the Iranian rial was trading at more than 920,000 to the US dollar, compared with less than 600,000 in mid-2024.

Earlier, President Masoud Pezeshkian defended Hemmati, a former central bank governor, telling lawmakers: “We are in a full-scale (economic) war with the enemy... we must take a war formation”.

“The economic problems of today’s society are not related to one person and we cannot blame it all on one person.”

Lawmakers took turns angrily censuring Hemmati, blaming him for Iran’s economic woes.

“People cannot afford to buy medicine and medical equipment,” said another, Fatemeh Mohammadbeigi.

“The rate of the foreign exchange is not real; the price is due to inflationary expectations,” Hemmati said in his defence.

“The most important problem of the country’s economy is inflation, and that is chronic inflation, which has plagued our economy for years,” the minister added.

Decades of US-led sanctions have battered Iran’s economy, with double-digit inflation causing an increase in consumer prices.

Published in Dawn, March 3rd, 2025