Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appointed four new ministers, including a Minister of Economic and Finance Affairs, a Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, a Minister of Roads and Urban Development and a Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade, Sputnik reports.
Rouhani made his announcement before the beginning of a parliamentary session Saturday, as the Parliament of the Islamic Republic gathered to discuss the four ministerial candidates.
Rouhani nominated Farhad Dejpasand as Minister of Economic and Finance Affairs, Mohammad Shariatmadari as Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, Mohammad Eslami as Minister of Roads and Urban Development and Reza Rahmani as Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade, according to a report by PressTV.
The Tehran parliament, known as the Islamic Consultative Assembly, will have the final say in the ministerial appointments, according to Iranian law.
Speaking before lawmakers, Rouhani said that Tehran has recently scored a "decisive and unprecedented victory against US plots," referring to the global reaction to Washington's unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran.
"In the past weeks and months, we witnessed the decisive and unprecedented victory of the Iranian nation against US plots," Rouhani said.
"It does not happen often that the US makes an important decision in the world against a big country and traditional allies of the US turn their back on it," ne noted.
In his speech, Rouhani observed that a year ago no one would have believed that Europe would stand against the US against Iran.
"Our nation has today the upper hand — at least in the political and legal arenas. The world public opinion recognizes Iran as a country that adheres to its commitments and the US as a country that does not live up to its promises and violates international regulations," he said.
The US announced its withdrawal from multilateral JCPOA agreement in May, and imposed new sanctions on Iran. Other signatories to the landmark treaty — Russia, China, the UK, Germany, France and the EU — vowed that they would stick to the historic peace treaty and offered initiatives to mitigate or circumvent US sanctions.
Speaking about the sanctions, the Iranian president noted that US sanctions target banks that facilitate the import of medicine and food, saying that the US has thus become not only the enemy of the government in Tehran, but the enemy of all Iranians.
"We have many friends. Russia, China, India, the European Union and some African and Latin American countries are our friends. We have to work with them to attract investment," the Iranian president said, expressing confidence that his nation will survive US intrigues, PressTV reported.