Rezai Announced Changes in the Structure and Duties of the Economic Coordination Council of the Powers; It Will No Longer Engage in Legislation

Mohsen Rezai, the head of the secretariat of the Economic Coordination Council of the Islamic Republic's powers, announced that with the new changes in the structure and duties of this council, "it is no longer intended for this council to engage in the legislative domain." Previously, the decisions and resolutions of this council had faced criticism from some officials, including several members of parliament, who deemed the council lacking legislative authority. Rezai also mentioned a new narrative regarding the asset generation plan, stating that according to the new regulations of this council, "asset generation" will be presented in the seventh development plan and will have the approval of the Islamic Consultative Assembly. The head of the secretariat of the Economic Coordination Council emphasized that the implementation period of the asset generation plan has been set to a maximum of two years, and with the commencement of the seventh development plan, the transfer of government assets will be based on this law. According to him, those transfers that occurred before the enforcement of the seventh development plan are legal, and even if their transfer mechanisms contradict the development plan, their execution will not be retroactive. Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the Attorney General of the country, also stated on July 20 that the legal deadline for utilizing the resolution related to the asset generation of government properties is two years, emphasizing that it is unknown whether this resolution will be extended after the two-year legal deadline, and the government must make the utmost use of it within these two years. On June 13, the Privatization Organization of the Islamic Republic announced that it had identified 1,506 "excess data" in the asset generation plan in Iran for "bartering" and claimed to "complete all unfinished projects in the country." In response to this, some economic experts again deemed this plan "extra-legal" and a cause of "plundering" public assets. In this regard, Hossein Ghorbanzadeh, the then-head of the Privatization Organization, on Saturday, June 13, stated that the goal of implementing the asset generation plan is to "complete all unfinished projects" in Iran and claimed that the sale of excess properties and "bartering or exchanging" excess data is "a path that aids the country's budget." Molavi Abdolhamid, the Sunni Friday prayer leader of Zahedan, also emphasized after the proposal of this plan and the emergence of numerous controversies that "we fear" asset generation will also become "like privatization." Siamak Khosravi Pour, an economic journalist, previously stated in an interview with the Persian section of Voice of America that asset generation is "an encroachment on public assets" and mentioned that none of the government assets are exempt from it. He stated that with the implementation of this "extra-legal" and "illegal" plan, public assets will be "plundered." In this regard, Mohsen Hajimirzaei, the former Minister of Education, while criticizing the mentioned plan, told the "Revolution Document Center" website: "When can I believe that you are concerned about idle assets? When I see you paying attention to more important and valuable assets. The most important asset of a society is social capital." He likened the government's behavior to that of a father who does not know how to manage expenses, adding: "This means that [the father] does not manage life well with the income he has, and after a while, he resorts to selling the carpet, television, and washing machine to enter that wrong cycle." Nevertheless, despite all the protests, this plan was approved by the Guardian Council and has been operational since the beginning of this year. Tahaan-Nazif, the spokesperson for the Guardian Council, also stated in February 2023 regarding the asset generation resolution that this resolution is "a resolution of the heads of powers" that "has been approved by the leadership." He also added that this resolution is within the framework of the "leadership's powers" from a "constitutional" perspective and is based on "legal" grounds, and its subject "does not relate to the Guardian Council."