Iran’s Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli caused a stir when he said that President Hassan Rouhani would serve a second term as president. When asked about the administration’s midterm scorecard and how many of his ministry’s plans have become operational, Fazli said, “This administration has not reached midterm yet, it’s only spent a quarter of its duration. Mr. Rouhani is to be president for eight years.”

Fazli is a traditional conservative politician politically aligned with parliament Speaker Ali Larijani. His entrance into the Rouhani administration as interior minister, with one of the main functions being to implement elections, was disappointing to some Reformists, although it helped deepen ties between Rouhani and Larijani and the bodies they lead. 

The Reformist Etemaad published, “It’s unlikely that an individual like [Fazli], who entered the moderate administration under the conservative umbrella, does not know what his former political friends will interpret and infer from this one sentence. With the emphasis on such an issue, it shows that, at the least, officials from the administration do not want to keep their comments to themselves like they did before.”

The article continued, “These comments might be a response to those groups who as of now are drawing lines to end the political life of Hassan Rouhani’s administration. … A message to the extremists that apparently after the administration’s success in foreign policy and the nuclear agreement have a common agenda to not allow this administration to exceed four years.”