![\"iran](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/iran-qalibaf-khamenei-raisi-majlis.jpg\" "\\"iran")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As Iran’s staged parliamentary elections approach, political tensions within the regime have intensified vividly. On Wednesday, August 30, Ali Khamenei, the Iranian regime\u2019s Supreme Leader, used the occasion of the so-called “Week of the Government” to commend the performance<\/a> of President Ebrahim Raisi. Khamenei asserted that over the past two years, Iran has witnessed notable improvements in key macroeconomic indicators, particularly in the industrial sector. These indicators include increased investment growth, reduced inflation, decreased unemployment, lower income inequality, and a boost in exports, Khamenei claimed.<\/p>\n Ebrahim Raisi’s government has faced unrelenting political, economic, and social setbacks in recent months. As a wide range of rival factions and media outlets aligned with them have vocally criticized the government’s policies and failures, Khamenei\u2019s recent defense of Raisi appears to be an attempt to shield him from criticism, especially considering his own prominent role in bringing Raisi to power.<\/p>\n Following Khamenei’s support for Raisi’s administration coupled with Raisi’s own statements that “victories are on the horizon”<\/a> and that “all of the country’s economic indicators are on a growth trajectory,” the Parliamentary Research Center released a report revealing that Raisi’s government has incurred debts exceeding 3 trillion tomans. The move hints at a direct confrontation, not with President Raisi, but with Khamenei himself.<\/p>\n When the eleventh parliament took office in 2019, Hassan Rouhani led the executive branch, and it was not surprising that the parliament, led by his rival Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, sought to undermine Rouhani’s administration.<\/p>\n However, when Khamenei consolidated power and acquired his long-desired “young Hezbollahi government”<\/a> in 2021, he likely believed that the parliament, carefully vetted through the Guardian Council’s oversight, would be more compliant with his directives. Yet, the past two years revealed Khamenei’s beliefs to be unfounded.<\/p>\n The discord between Raisi’s government and Ghalibaf’s parliament escalated to the point where Khamenei was compelled to intervene during the Eid al-Fitr ceremony in 2023. He called on the leaders of the three branches of government to “refrain from engaging in peripheral issues.”<\/p>\n However, this did little to dampen the ongoing conflict between the parliament and the government. Impeachment proceedings against several cabinet ministers from Raisi’s government and widespread rumors of Ghalibaf’s potential removal from the speakership in the upcoming elections were only the public manifestations of this discord.<\/p>\n #Iran<\/a> News in Brief — NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) May 14, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
In an article entitled \u201cThe Qalibaf-elimination Project Kickstarted\u201d, the state-run Eqtesad News shed lights on the regime's factional infighting and how some MPs are paving the way to get rid of the current parliament speaker. Read\u2b07\ufe0fhttps:\/\/t.co\/I4egGxPSqI<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/li4SCn5gtA<\/a><\/p>\n