President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Friday announced two key appointments, including the country's new atomic chief, signalling important changes in the structure of his expected new government. Ahmadinejad named Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's former envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, as new head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, the official IRNA news agency reported. Controversial aide and close relative Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, currently vice president in charge of tourism, will become the new first vice-president, according to the report. Mashaie replaces Parviz Davoudi who is the current first vice president. There are several other vice presidents in Ahmadinejad's current line-up. Ahmadinejad has vowed to make “considerable changes” to his government and on Thursday pledged that his new cabinet, to be unveiled in coming weeks, will be “10 times” as powerful as the previous one. Salehi, who replaces Gholam Reza Aghazadeh, is known as an open minded administrator and was the person who signed the protocol with the IAEA in December 2003 which gave the UN agency a freer hand in inspecting Iran's nuclear sites. Ahmadinejad's present government stopped applying that protocol, linked to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in February 2006 shortly after Iran's nuclear programme was referred to the UN Security Council. For 12 years Aghazadeh spearheaded Iran's controversial nuclear programme, which the international community suspects is aimed at making atomic weapons, though Tehran denies it. New first vice-president Mashaie, a confidant of Ahmadinejad, is a controversial figure who last year was rapped by the country's hardliners and by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for saying Iran is a “friend of the Israeli people.” Mashaie's promotion is expected to ruffle feathers among the country's clerical groups who heavily influence politics in the Islamic republic. He provoked the ire of MPs for allegedly watching a Turkish woman dance while at a tourism congress in Turkey in 2007. Aghazadeh has given no reason for his resignation, but he has long been a friend of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the main opposition leader who is bitterly disputing Ahmadinejad's re-election and has demanded a complete re-run of the presidential vote. “Mr. Aghazadeh made enormous efforts during years and years in the nuclear field and thanks to him we are today witnessing extensive progress in this area,” Mohsen Delaviz, spokesman for Iran's atomic body, said.
