On the eighth of the current January , Iran turned the page of its contemporary political history in the departure of its strong man Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani at the age of 82 years after suffering from a severe heart attack who was taken to Shohada Hospital in Tajrish in the northern suburb of Tehran. Rafsanjani is the second man in the Iranian regime, and one of the most influential figures in Tehran’s policy since 1979. Perhaps the unexpected death of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is the first scene on the transitional stage of the emerging leadership in Iran, in a play that its subsequent scenes probably have not written yet. Today, after “black box” was gone of the Supreme Leader(Murshed) and the balancing force that maintained a balance between conservatism and reformist movement , we wonder who is Hashemi Rafsanjani?
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was born , whose real name is “Ali Akbar Bhermana”, on August 25 1934, in the village of Bahreman, a suburb of the city of Rafsanjan of Kerman province of southeastern Iran. Rafsanjani began studying at a local religious school, then left his village at the age of fourteen to pursue religious education in Qom, complete his education at the religious Hawza of the city at the hands of senior scientists, such as Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi , and the leader of the Iranian revolution , the late Ruhollah Khomeini. He began his Political activity in active way since 1961, where he walked on his teacher Khomeini’s approach, and became one of his close supporters , his opinion affects the opinions of others, and Khomeini told everyone that Rafsanjani is in his full trust .. as one of the pillars of the central Revolution, ” the revolution is living as long as Rafsanjani alive, “and” the revolution’s okay as long as Rafsanjani’s okay. ”
He led the pro-Khomeini forces in Iran and was arrested five times by intelligence SAVAK service at the time of the shah of Iran , Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, because of his political activity and spent about 4years and 5 months in prison , and after the the success of the Iranian revolution in February 1979 , he maintained his positions nearly a quarter of a century since he undertook as a speaker of parliament between 1980 and 1989. In the late year of Iran-Iraq war which was ended in 1988 , where he was the appropriate Iranian official for the rapprochement with the west in the upper circles of the Iranian government, where he was among those who played an important role in opening a new page with the administration of the republican president the late Ronald Reagan in January 1981 through the end of US hostages crisis who were detained in the HQ of the US embassy in Tehran sinceNov.1979 as the fingers pointed to its biggest role in what was known scandal of Iran “contra” which formed a secret deal to sell US arms to Iran during its war with Iraq and directing returns of these sales by the CIA to finance the rebels “Contra” who are opposing the rule of Sandnestaa Front in Nicaragua, while the US congress rejected to fund those rebels by USA.
Also rumored a lot about the quest of Rafsanjani with Khomeini without success to ease the hostile tone to the United States for the purpose of being able to achieve a qualitative breakthrough in the relationship between the two countries. According to the compatible stories that he is the one who convinced Khomeini to accept a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq war.
Khomeini was well aware of the importance of Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, his student, the son of the bourgeoisie, who became his right arm, and ” guide of the shade ,” he said in describing its importance, having exposed to an assassination attempt in the first year of the revolution, “the Islamic revolution in Iran will remain alive as long as Rafsanjani alive. ” He Rafsanjani was saved from the assassination attempt, and he lived after it about 38 years which is the age of the Islamic revolution in Iran, he was the second personality who was the most influential ones in Iran, after the supreme leader, his master, Ayatollah Khomeini, in a first stage, and then the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He was elected president in Iran for two terms in a row from 3 August 1989 to August 2 1997, was characterized by pragmatism, which can be seen in many of the positions adopted by him and the policies that led or promoted. He can also be described as the owner of reform orientation from the perspective aspect that could be described as liberal, especially on the economic front, and in other times on the cultural level, although not at the political level, and sought during his two terms to do “pulse checking” to test the reaction of the other party regarding the launch of initiatives to improve relations with the West in general, and Washington in particular, but the balance of internal forces and the positions of the other parties in Iran, and the responses of the Western and American act, and perhaps personal accounts, prevented starting in this direction. As for attitudes towards the Arab region and its countries and their leaders have seen Iran’s foreign policies, the degree of improvement in its relations with the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia at the forefront. In his reign Iran took a shift from Iran’s revolution to Iran’s state as it made several significant steps and the most important of it to suspend the idea of exporting the Iranian revolution, which led some to charges that he wants to bury the revolution, which led to a focus on rebuilding and formulate a regional and international role suitable for Iran . His visit to Moscow in less than a month after the death of Khomeini was an attempt to open up to more than one party, despite what was said at the time that the commandment of Imam Khomeini included a blistering attack on Moscow, in addition to announcing that the revolution “is not for export.”
And on the Iranian domestic level , played a unique role in the consolidation of the Islamic Republic, and that’s when Khomeini died in 1989, Rafsanjani announced that Khamenei is undoubtedly the best candidate to replace him. But despite this close alliance, the views of both Khamenei and Rafsanjani began to diverge dramatically, but this dispute did not come out to the public, and the image of coordination and mutual respect between the two men were remained in control of the scene despite rooted differences . among the features of this dispute is Rafsanjani position of “velayat-e faqih,” and what he said in February 2015 that “the management of velayat-e faqih Foundation by the Council, rather than one person is more convenient.” Rafsanjani was seen that there are “some of the errors committed in practical terms since the start of the revolution in Iran.” In one of the most controversy between the two positions, which revealed the differences between them, that Rafsanjani wrote on tweet via Twitter which he said that “tomorrow is a world of dialogue, not the world of the missiles,” Khamenei replied in an escalated tone to the extent of being accused of “treason.” In the early nineties of the last century during the reign of Rafsanjani , the Iranian Revolutionary Guards began to expand in the economy who encouraged the Revolutionary Guards to participate in building the country after the war between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988.
For many ordinary Iranians, Rafsanjani was a figure surrounded by skepticism and respect reluctantly because of what collected a fortune. In 2005, Rafsanjani fought his last experience in the Iranian presidential elections as defeated by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Where accusations of corruption and possession of vast wealth estimated by Forbes magazine in 2003, the wealth of his family hundreds of millions led to inflict his electoral defeat. It was filmed a video in the election campaign of 2005, on which his eagerness to watch football matches was shown on TV, in a mansion in the area of wealthy north Tehran .but it all proved to be no match to the round of video filmed the candidate Muhammad Ahmadi Nejad at his home in a suburb of working class in eastern Tahran and the film reached its climax in a sarcastic and clear note towards his major rival : Do you have a sauna and Jacuzzi? The answer by the son of Ahmadi Nejad : whar are these things ?
On the security side Rafsanjani had , when he was president of the Council of Representatives or the president of the Republic , a prominent role in the assassination of Iranian dissidents at home and abroad.
Rafsanjani’s involvement in the massacre of the execution of tens of thousands of political prisoners in prison began in 1988, here he was servinf as parliament speaker between 1980 and 1988 . in the late year of Iran-Iraq war that was ended in 1988 , he as appointed by Ayatollah Khomeini as acting commander of the armed forces and he played a major role in choosing Ali Khamenei as a Higher Murshed (guide) for the regime after the death of Khomeini in 1988 and took over for himelf the presidency of the republic in 3 august 1997. And kept for himself the position of presidency of the Expediency Discernment Council since it was established by a decision of Khomeini in 1987 until his death noting that at his time dozens of assassinations and liquidation operations against the opponents of the velayat – e faqih regime were occurred inside and outside of Iran . at the beginning of the era of Rafsanjani as president in 1989 and Iran assassinated in Vienna Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran and his deputy Abdulla Azar which he was on the negotiation table with a delegation coming from Iran .
In the second year of the presidency of Rafsanjani, namely in April 24 1990 Iranian intelligence agents assassinated Kazem Rajavi, brother of Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the People’s Mojahedin opposition organization of Iran(the Mojahedin –eKhalq) , and was a prominent activist in the field of human rights, where he was assassinated near his home in the Coupe in in Geneva . Swiss Judge Hatlan announced at June 22, 1990 in a press statement that the 13 official persons in charge of the ruling regime in Iran came from Tehran to Geneva with “diplomacy” passports to carry out this assassination, and some of them returned immediately after the assassination to Tehran by the company Iran air. On the third of May 1991 Iran assassinated the Secretary General of the Arab Front of Ahwaz, Hussein Madi, in Baghdad, where the HQ of the front as there . In 1991, under the presidency of Rafsanjani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards assassinated Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister of Iran under the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and led to the death of a French security man and a French woman, too. In Berlin in 1992 in the era of Rafsanjani also Iran assassinated , Secretary-General of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran Sadegh Sharafkandi and three of his aides, “Fattah Abdoulie, Humayun Ardalan, Nuri Dhecrda.” German court in investigations accused Rafsanjani based on the confessions of two of the arrested perpetrators , one of the elements of the Revolutionary Guards and the other from the militia of “Hezb ullah” the Lebanese party , and the Argentine judiciary accused 8 Iranian officials led by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi of involvement of planning and overseeing the bloody bombings which targeted a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people and wounded 300 others.
The other defendants were the Secretary of the Expediency Council Mohsen Rezaei and Ali Akbar Velayati ,the advisor of Iran ‘s Supreme Leader for International Affairs , Ali Fallahian , former intelligence minister, and Hedi Slimani and Imad Mughniyeh. As the Iranian opposition accuses Rafsanjani to oversee the assassination of Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party leaders in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin in 1991.
According to the US newspaper ” The Wall Street Journal,” it is based on the testimony of one of the intelligence officers at the Criminal Court in Germany, Rafsanjani was always meet in regularly with the “Committee for Special operations” overseeing the attempt of assassinations outside. According to the newspaper, the judges of the courts of Argentina to collect documents to prove the role of Rafsanjani in the bombing of the Israeli embassy in 1991 and the bombing of the Jewish center in 1994 in Buenos Aires, where more than 100 people were killed in the two blasts . In the era of Rafsanjani’s presidency in 1995, the regime elements booby-trapped Towers “Akhbar” in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US soldiers.
Assassinations serial on the inside of its part, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence implemented under Rafsanjani, which was led by Ali Fallahian, a wave of “serial murders”, with the liquidation of dozens of writers and politicians at home, and killed Mohammad Mokhtari and Jafar Buendh and Dariush Forouhar and his wife Parvaneh Eskandari and Pirouz Davani, and carried out by cell led by Saeed Emami deputy intelligence minister at the time. The assassinations are made in accordance with the Fatawi of hardline clerics Mesbah Yazdi and Jenati and others, where the leaked list based on the fatwas of the assassination of 197 intellectuals and writers, but stopped after a controversial within the system and the rise of the reformists led by former President Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005).
Between 2007 and 2011, Rafsanjani became chairman of the Expediency Council, in the presidential elections held in 2009 supporting the candidacy of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the presidential elections in the face of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and rejected the results and accused the conservative currents dominant on all joints of the state at the time, and the pro-Ahmadinejad, for its rigging, that he paid a price later for his exit from «the Assembly of experts» in 2011. thus, Rafsanjani has regained a lot of his lost popularity among the Iranian people of moderate voters when he is perceived to be supporting the aspirations of the green movement to reject the results of the presidential election. Here Rafsanjani intersected with Supreme Leader(Murshed) Ali Khamenei when he stood to the side of the reformers and moderates versus fundamentalists who lined up along the guide(Murshed) after the events of 2009 and called for a national reconciliation to end the events of 2009 but failed to file in that matter. The hard liners in the Iranian society considered Rafsanjani the only competitor to the Murshed (guide) Khamenei.
Rafsanjani was not a leader can be described as «charismatic», but it undoubtedly was « skillful professor» in flexible tactics and alliances and political maneuvers , and he was also called by some with the title of presidents maker, especially in view of its role in supporting all of former President Mohammad Khatami “1997/2005 ” and the current president Hassan Rowhani, both are classified as reformers , though others believe he did it because he was obliged when he was unable himself to run in the presidential elections either because he had completed two terms in a row, when the supporting Khatami, or because the Guardian Council rejected his candidacy for presidential elections in 2013 which led him to support the current president Rouhani. these two men, “Rafsanjani and Khatami” had a decisive impact on the victory of Ruhani. Rafsanjani announced before short period that he was confident of the victory of Ruhani in the second term , and in May of the previous year ,he said to media means that he is confident about the future of the Islamic Republic. ” and said “with a virtue of the election of Rouhani , the country to be put on the rails of right approach after the deviation under Ahmadinejad, adding,” Now I can die in peace. ” So he was the most prominent supporters of negotiations with the West over its nuclear dossier, and welcomed, with others warmly to the Geneva nuclear agreement in late 2015.
Analysts described the departure of Rafsanjani being a painful blow to the reformist current , which is trying to open up to the world, reducing the lock and rowdy of the Iranian regime, especially after the political positions of Rafsanjani evolved significantly to featuring political realism, where observers say that the sudden absence from the political scene will lead to more assembly of powers However to the leader Khamenei, and to further Iranian incursions in the Arab region through its sectarian arms by involving in proxy wars. His death means the loss of one of the most important influence channels on the decisions of Ali Khamenei , and one of the biggest supporters of the current Iranian President Hassan Rohani . And also it means theend of traditional bilateral policy , as a bilateral Rafsanjani-Khamenei, and Ahmadinejad Rfsnjana-, and Rfsnjana- Mohammad Yazdi, reached to an end.
Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic Studies