Iran’s parliament on Wednesday approved all members of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s new Cabinet, which includes a member of the Iranian negotiating team which signed the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, The Associated Press reported.
This marks the first time in over two decades that a leader has been able to get all of his officials through the body.
The approval marks an early win for Pezeshkian, who was elected after a helicopter crash in May killed his predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi.
Among the members of Pezeshkian’s new Cabinet is Abbas Araqchi, 61, who will be Iran’s new foreign minister and was a member of the Iranian negotiating team that reached the 2015 deal. Then-US President Donald Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, and attempts by the Biden administration to revive the deal have failed.
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.
Pezeshkian is considered a reformist President who has stated his desire to improve Iran's relationships with the West but that, however, does not include Israel.
On the day of the first round of the elections, responding to a question from a journalist about how Iran would manage international relations if he were president, Pezeshkian replied, “God willing, we will try to have friendly relations with all countries except Israel.”
He later reaffirmed Iran's anti-Israel stance, stating that “resistance movements” across the region will not allow Israel’s "criminal policies" towards the Palestinian Arabs to continue.
"The Islamic Republic has always supported the resistance of the people of the region against the illegitimate Zionist regime," Pezeshkian said in a message to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.