Iran dismisses central bank governor

The Iranian government removed Abdolnaser Hemmati as governor of the Central Bank of Iran on May 30, after three years in the post.

The Iranian president’s office reported that the deputy governor, Akbar Komeijani, will act as governor. However, the presidency’s announcement did not appear to say that Komeijani had been appointed governor on a permanent basis.

The president’s office said Hemmati’s candidacy in the upcoming presidential elections makes it impossible for him to fulfil his duties as central bank governor. Iran holds presidential elections on June 18.

In a tweet dated May 30, Hemmati noted that one of his opponents, chief justice Ebrahim Raisi, had not resigned to contest the election. Therefore, at the time, he said he did not plan to either.

But media reports quote Hemmati saying on social media that Iranian president Hassan Rouhani had told him he needed to resign if he wanted to pursue the presidency.

The Central Bank of Iran does not have an independent board. Rather, the president of Iran and several ministerial-level officials form a “general assembly” of the central bank, which names and removes the governor.

Newspaper Tehran Times reported that the Rouhani government had named Hamid Pour-Mohammadi as the new governor. Pour-Mohammadi is deputy director of the planning and budget organisation.

However, the CBI website lists neither Pour-Mohammadi nor Komeijani as governor. The relevant webpage implies the post is vacant.

Uphill battle

The Guardian Council, a regime organism that vets candidates and reviews laws, approved Hemmati’s candidacy for the presidential election on May 25. He is one of seven certified candidates. Like Rouhani, Hemmati is considered a moderate. Rouhani has served two consecutive terms and cannot run in this year’s election.

The council vetted nearly 600 candidacies, and critics – including Rouhani – accused it of eliminating the most viable reformist options. The council also vetoed a bid by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president from 2005 to 2013.

The cull leaves Hemmati as one of only two reformist candidates.

One of the major political and economic problems Iran faces is the effects of US sanctions, which include a precipitous fall in the value of the currency on unofficial markets since 2018. Many of the country’s assets have also been frozen, cutting off a source of much-needed foreign exchange. Hemmati has been heavily involved in talks over the past year to release Iran’s frozen overseas assets.

Rouhani’s administration named Hemmati governor in 2018, after a failed currency reform led to a fall in the rial on unregulated markets and the firing of then-governor Valiollah Seif. A Tehran prosecutor indicted Seif last month, in what some saw a conservative attack by Resai’s judiciary on the reformists ahead of the elections.

Hemmati holds a PhD in economics from the University of Tehran. He previously served as head of Iran’s insurance regulator and was CEO of Bank Melli Iran.

Komeijani worked at the CBI between 1998 and 2007 as vice-governor for economic affairs, according to his official biography. He returned to this post in 2013 before becoming deputy governor in January 2014.

A former faculty member at the University of Tehran, Komeijani did his postgraduate work in economics at the University of Wisconsin.