Iranian parliament to hold electronic confidence vote for Mehrdad Akhlaqi

The Iranian parliament has decided that the confidence vote for Defense Ministry nominee Mehrdad Akhlaqi will be held by electronic voting, scheduled for Sunday next week, October 18.

Ahmad Naderi, a member of the parliament's presiding board, said on Saturday: "The current exceptional circumstances require holding the vote virtually and not using paper ballots."

If held under this arrangement, the confidence vote for Akhlaqi would be the first in the history of the Iranian parliament to be conducted online.

This comes after Iranian President Masoud Bezheshkian nominated Akhlaqi last week to take the Defense portfolio, about seven months after the previous defense minister, Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh, was killed in a simultaneous attack carried out by Israel and the United States.

Akhlaqi is an official working in Iran's aviation and aerospace industries, and he is listed on U.S. and European sanctions lists.