VOA News on Iran

A former Iranian minister has been sentenced to three years in jail for corruption, state media reported on Wednesday, citing the judiciary, in a rare conviction of a senior government official.

"Following a trial, former Agriculture Minister Javad Sadatinejad was sentenced to three years in prison," said Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, as quoted by the official Iran newspaper.

Sadatinejad was agriculture minister from August 2021 to April 2022, when he resigned after the case came to light. He had previously been a deputy for the central city of Kashan.

The former minister had been prosecuted as part of a major corruption case linked to the import of livestock supplies into Iran, for which 10 people have already been convicted. He can appeal the ruling.

The judiciary also said two former ministers had been summoned and 45 other people charged in another corruption case, worth $3.7 billion, involving one of Iran's biggest tea trading companies.

In September 2020, a former high-ranking judicial official, Akbar Tabari, was sentenced to 31 years for corruption, one of the heaviest sentences handed down to a former official in the Islamic republic.

Iran's parliament approved changes to the working week for all government employees on Wednesday that would establish a 40-hour work week with a Friday-Saturday weekend.

The legislation, which still requires a green light from constitutional watchdog the Guardian Council, would replace the existing 44-hour work week with a half-day Thursday and Friday — the Muslim day of prayer and rest — the only full day off.

The change had been hotly debated, and 136 lawmakers voted in favor, with 66 against and three abstentions, the official IRNA news agency said.

Economists had warned that the alternative of a Thursday-Friday weekend risked deepening Iran's isolation by limiting most international transactions to three days per week.

But some clerics accused supporters of a Friday-Saturday weekend of taking their lead from the Judeo-Christian traditions of the Western world.

However, lawmaker Mohsen Pirhadi told parliament Wednesday that leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Javadi Amoli had raised no objection to Saturday as a weekend day.