Request from Several Ministers to Khamenei to Expedite Consideration of Anti-Money Laundering Bills in the Assembly

A member of parliament reported that several ministers from the twelfth cabinet have requested the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic to make a "direct emphasis" on expediting the review of the Palermo and CFT bills in the Expediency Council. Previously, Laya Joneidi, the legal deputy of the President of Iran, had stated that the government requested the Expediency Council to review the bill for Iran's accession to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo) and the Convention on the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) more quickly. The final approval of these two bills, which are part of the four bills of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), has faced difficulties, but the other two bills of this group, including the "Bill to Amend the Law on Combating the Financing of Terrorism" and the "Bill to Amend the Law on Combating Money Laundering," have been approved by the Guardian Council and the Expediency Council. Alireza Rahimi, a representative from Tehran in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, tweeted that "a number of ministers have requested, in a letter, that the Supreme Leader directly emphasize the need to expedite the review of the CFT and Palermo by the Expediency Council." Mr. Rahimi described this letter as "compassionate" and added that "an extremist member of the Stability Front in the National Security Commission has clearly distorted this letter as a threat of collective resignation from the cabinet." Previously, some Telegram channels close to the Stability Front, including the "Cyber Headquarters of Ammar," wrote: "It has been heard that several ministers of the purple government, after failing to align the people and the system with their new damaging project, have sent a letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeking to impose FATF and threatening to resign if it is not approved." This channel expressed satisfaction with the potential resignation of these ministers on behalf of "the people" and wrote, "These individuals, who have thrown the country into the pit of the JCPOA and now take a demanding stance without any response to the nation, apparently have a new mission to throw the country into the FATF pit." The "Cyber Headquarters of Ammar" also warned that not only the resignation of the ministers but also the proposal for the incompetence of Rouhani is now the maximum demand of various segments of the people, but they have refrained from pursuing this legal and field demand solely based on the opinion of Mr. Khamenei, which aligns with the higher interests of the Islamic system. The state-affiliated news agency IRNA also reported that "this rumor" is raised by those known as members of the Stability Front, and that "this is not all that this specific group of government opponents has employed to obstruct the path of FATF." IRNA did not provide further details on this matter and did not mention any specific individual, but wrote that this claim "like previous times, has no basis" and is as "baseless as the rumor of Mohammad Javad Zarif's resignation, which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not even consider worthy of denial." The news agency affiliated with Hassan Rouhani's government warned the members of the Stability Front that such factional abuses of national interests might "exceed the control of their own circle and become too late to manage, as we witnessed in December 2017." Some members of Rouhani's government had stated that the hands of the government's opponents were involved in launching these protests, which began in Mashhad in response to rising prices and quickly spread to various cities in Iran, but when the protests expanded, they became uncontrollable. These reports about the approval of the FATF-related bills come as 29 months after the submission of the bill for the Islamic Republic's accession to the Palermo Convention, which was referred to the parliament as the first bill among the four related to FATF, the review and approval of these four bills is still open. Additionally, the process of final approval of the government's amendment to the Palermo Convention, which had once passed all stages of approval in the parliament and the Guardian Council, has not yet been completed. Although Hassan Rouhani's government has called for a faster review of the Palermo bill in the Expediency Council, this council did not approve the mentioned bill in its session on Saturday, January 29, and some members of this body also spoke of "many issues" with it. Opponents of Iran's accession to FATF regulations, most of whom are appointed by the Supreme Leader, argue that the approval of these bills would block the way for financial assistance to "Hamas," "Hezbollah Lebanon," and similar groups. In addition to disagreements over the details of the FATF-related bills, the manner of reviewing these bills in the Expediency Council has also drawn criticism from some government officials and members of parliament. After the formation of a committee in the Expediency Council titled "High Supervisory Board for the Implementation of the General Policies of the System," this body sends its objections to the Guardian Council, which then requests the parliament to resolve the issues.