New York Times: Even before his daughter and four other relatives were briefly detained on Sunday, one of the big mysteries to envelop Iran since the disputed presidential election has been the role of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The New York Times
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: June 22, 2009
CAIRO — Even before his daughter and four other relatives were briefly detained on Sunday, one of the big mysteries to envelop Iran since the disputed presidential election has been the role of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
One of Iran’s wealthiest and most powerful men, a former right-hand man to the father of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mr. Rafsanjani was an outspoken critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the campaign and a supporter of the opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi.
His absence from public view, coupled with the provocative, though temporary, detention of his family members appears to have escalated an internal battle between two classes of Iran’s political elite. Even if the street protests are stopped, the split threatens to paralyze the state and undermine the legitimacy it has tried to construct since the 1979 revolution, analysts say.
“I see the country’s political elite more divided than anytime in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a political analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Rafsanjani, one of the republic’s founding fathers, the man who made Khameini Supreme Leader, is now in the opposition.”
Mr. Rafsanjani, who leads two powerful state institutions, has been working behind the scenes to find a compromise solution to the disputed June 12 presidential election, a relative said Sunday. The detention of his family members, this relative said, was a pressure tactic on the part of his opponents.
It seems clear that the 75-year-old is at the center of a fight for the future of the Islamic Republic. Mr. Rafsanjani’s vision of the state, and his position in his nation’s history, is being challenged by a new political elite led by Mr. Ahmadinejad and younger radicals who fought Iraq during the eight-year war.
Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies have tried to demonize Mr. Rafsanjani as corrupt and weak, attacks that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not strongly discouraged. On the other side, opposition leaders, especially Mr. Moussavi, have received support from Mr. Rajsanjani, political analysts said.
“It has become an extremely dangerous, zero-sum game,” said an expatriate political consultant who asked not to be identified because his family lives in Iran and he was afraid of retribution.
It is a quirk of history that Mr. Rafsanjani, the ultimate insider, finds himself aligned with a reform movement that once vilified him as deeply corrupt. Mr. Rafsanjani was doctrinaire anti-American hard-liner in the early days of the revolution who remains under indictment for ordering the bombing in of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994 when he was president. But he has evolved over time to a more pragmatic view, analysts say.
He supports greater opening to the West, privatizing parts of the economy, and granting more power to civil elected institutions. His view is opposite of those in power now who support a stronger religious establishment and have done little to modernize the stagnant economy.
Beyond the clash of ideas, the battle is also personal.
“At a political level what’s taking place now, among many other things, is the 20-year rivalry between Khamenei and Rafsanjani coming to a head,” Mr. Sadjadpour said. “It’s an Iranian version of the Corleones and the Tattaglias; there are no good guys and bad guys, only bad and worse.”
It is not clear what leverage Mr. Rajsanjani can bring to this contest. If he speaks out, the relative said, he will lose his ability to broker a compromise. Mr. Rafsanjani leads two powerful councils, one that technically has oversight of the supreme leader, but it is not clear that he could exercise that authority to challenge Ayatollah Khamenei directly.
Yet even in his silence, Mr. Rafsanjani’s pedigree presents a problem for Ayatollah Khameini.
In his Friday sermon, the supreme leader appealed for unity among the elite. He mildly criticized Mr. Ahmadinejad for his personal attacks on Mr. Rafsanjani. But the leader also made it clear that even revolutionary credentials could not save political leaders if they go too far, a clear threat to Mr. Rafsanjani, analysts said.
“If the political elite ignore the law — whether they want it or not — they would be responsible for the chaos and bloodshed,” Ayatollah Khameini said. “I urge old friends and brothers to be patient and keep control of yourselves.”
Mr. Rafsanjani has been in opposition before. In the days of the shah, he was a religious student of Ayatollah Khomeini at the center of Shiite learning, in the city of Qum. He was imprisoned under the shah, and became so closely associated with the revolutionary leader he was known as “melijak Khomeini,” or “sidekick of Khomeini.”’ After 1979, he went on to become the speaker of Parliament.
There, Mr. Rafsanjani established himself in a role that would continue for decades. “Just as the ayatollah had come to personify the revolution, Rafsanjani came to personify the state,” wrote the author and Iran expert, Robin Wright, in her book “In the Name of God, The Khomeini Decade.”
Mr. Rafsanjani later served two terms as president and was instrumental in elevating Ayatollah Khamenei to replace Ayatollah Khomenei in 1989.
People who worked in the government at the time said that Mr. Rafsanjani, as president, ran the nation — while Ayatollah Khameini followed his lead. But over time the two grew apart, as Ayatollah Khameini found his own political constituency in the military and Mr. Rafsanjani found his own reputation sullied. He is often accused of corruption because of the great wealth he and his family amassed.
He was so damaged politically that after he left the presidency, he failed to win enough votes to enter Parliament. In 2002, he was appointed to the head of the Expediency Council, which is supposed to arbitrate disputes between the elected Parliament and the unelected Guardian Council.
And in 2005, he ran for president again but lost in a runoff to Mr. Ahmadinejad. He was then elected to lead the Assembly of Experts. The body has the power to oversee the supreme leader and replace him when he dies, but its members rarely exercise power day to day.
One political analyst said the key to understanding Mr. Rafsanjani is in a book that he wrote about, Amir Kabir, the prime minister under Nasserdin Shah, who was killed in 1852 but was widely regarded as Iran’s first modern reformer. Mr. Rafsanjani wants to go down in history as a modern day Amir Kabir, the analyst said.
And that may explain his decision, for now, to stay silent and aloof from the street clashes as well as the leadership that many believe stole an presidential election.
“He is the question mark right now,” said the expatriate political analyst. “A lot of people are hoping that he is the guy who can mend it.”
