TEHRAN – After days of a political tug-of-war between proponents and opponents of the plan to impeach President Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian Parliament has announced that it will not proceed with the plan.

The impeachment plan had gained steam in recent days after a group of conservative lawmakers gathered signatures from their colleagues in the Parliament calling for ousting Rouhani for his failure to manage the country’s economy in a proper way.

The plan was met with firm opposition from many factions across the political spectrum, which said impeaching the president does not serve the country’s interests as Rouhani’s second term in office is going to end in eight months and the impeachment process will take a longer time than expected.

In light of these facts, Ahmad Amirabadi Farahani, a member of the Parliament’s presiding board, said in a televised interview that the Parliament has dropped the impeachment plan.

“The fact is that if we impeach the president right now, the process will take nearly two months and we will reach the tenth month of [the Iranian calendar] year. Thereafter, the first vice president will be the head of government for three months, and then we will have the holidays of Eid [Nowrouz]. Soon after, the government’s term will end. Had the impeachment yielded results, we would have done it. Therefore, we in the Parliament have concluded that the impeachment [plan] should be dropped,” the Fars news agency quoted Farahani as saying in an interview with the channel 5 of the national TV.

On Saturday, a senior conservative lawmaker denied that the impeachment plan was put on the shelf. The lawmaker, Mojtaba Zolnouri, who serves as the head of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said that 44 lawmakers have signed a bill calling for ousting President Rouhani. But Zolnouri also announced that eleven lawmakers have withdrawn their support for impeaching the president.