Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani: Founder, Manipulator, and Player of the Islamic Republic

Over the past four decades, we have witnessed three parallel and sometimes contradictory roles and faces of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in Iranian politics: 1) One of the founding members of the Islamic Republic who considers this system his own and appears in the role of a caring mother for it, whether in the capacity of Speaker of the Parliament, President, or as the head of the Expediency Discernment Council and the Assembly of Experts, even when he has lost many of these titles and faced attacks from his opponents; he has at times preferred the survival of the regime over maintaining his own position, something that Ali Khamenei has not always prioritized. Rafsanjani opposed the Islamic Republic's adventurous and ambitious actions at the beginning of the Syrian civil war, which Khamenei is currently pursuing in the Middle East against Iran's national interests (by condemning the massacre of people by Bashar al-Assad), but immediately retracted this due to its unpopularity within the government ranks; he also played a central role in ending the Iran-Iraq war with the aim of preserving the regime. 2) A behind-the-scenes player who is sometimes completely overlooked by political factions and at other times is consulted en masse. He has not taken a moment of political leave in the past 40 years and has not withdrawn (unlike figures like Mousavi Khomeini or Ardabili), and when he has not been consulted due to pressures from the establishment and security forces, he has at least influenced political discourse by writing memoirs and political notes. He played a pivotal role in Khatami's success in becoming president and also in Rouhani's rise to this position. 3) A political pragmatist and a participant in factional rivalries who takes any action to maintain his position and that of his close associates and allies, using every opportunity to act both behind and in front of the scenes; some criticisms directed at him pertain to this very aspect of his acting. Many of his critics want him to retire in this regard and only stick to the other two roles. Rafsanjani, unlike Jannati and Yazdi and hundreds of other high-ranking clerics in the country, has not been a shadow politician. He has been a trendsetter and intervenor, and for this reason, he has accepted the risks of his actions. This is why, due to the role he took on after 2009, he easily stepped aside from the candidacy for the Assembly of Experts and gave way to Mahdavi Kani. He accepts his failures but returns to the arena after gathering forces when the opponent has weakened. Of course, Rafsanjani is one of the politicians under whose watch thousands were massacred (like the 1988 massacre) right before his eyes (the possibility of his ignorance is nearly zero), and unlike Montazeri, he showed no reaction to it and even swept them under the rug in his memoirs. Part of the chain murders of writers and political activists, and assassinations abroad during his presidency occurred under the direction of his Minister of Intelligence, and he has never taken responsibility in this regard. Rafsanjani has never sat idly by for directors to assign him a role or merely play a directing role. Hundreds of clerics appointed by Khamenei to various positions such as Friday prayer leaders or membership in appointed institutions are primarily Khamenei's pawns in the system and not a proactive political actor. Whenever he felt that there were not enough players in the field of pragmatism, he stepped in himself. Unlike most clerics who believe in the guardianship of the jurist, he did not consider all social and political arenas to belong to the country's leader. Of course, he gained the capacity to act alongside Ali Khamenei at a time when he held the second role in governing the country after Khomeini. In this regard, only Mehdi Karroubi, Mohammad Khatami, and Abdollah Nouri can be compared to him. For this reason, all of them have been and are under the wrath of the leadership apparatus. Rafsanjani has continued his political activities within the framework of the Islamic Republic without having taken any steps to oppose the existing political system or question its pillars, even in conditions where he has faced the most attacks against him. Unlike Hossein Ali Montazeri and Abdollah Nouri, Rafsanjani lacks foundational principles and values (other than staying in the scene at any cost) that would guide him in politics. He is a capable swimmer who tries to find his place in the turbulent waves of politics without any leverage. Rafsanjani has had serious enemies and ambiguous friends, encompassing a wide range from religious to non-religious and from Islamists to secularists. He has been successful in reducing the enmity of enemies and maintaining ambiguous friends. Despite his direct involvement in all the suppressions of the 1980s (as Speaker of the Parliament, Deputy Commander-in-Chief, and one of the five-member circle that governed the country during Khomeini's illness) and the 1990s (as President, where for the first four years the security and law enforcement agencies were also under his supervision), and in the period after that as head of two powerful institutions that could have questioned Khamenei and his affiliated institutions for suppressions and corruption, he has introduced himself as a herald of moderation. Despite opening pathways for military and security institutions in the country's economy, financial corruption, and the abuse of power by some of his family members (Mehdi Hashemi, who has been convicted in domestic courts for this reason), and his constant defense of the regime of discrimination and hatred of the Islamic Republic, he has succeeded in presenting himself as a moderate politician to Iranians and the international community. It is through these methods that his list of Experts, despite the presence of black figures like Daryush Najafabadi and Reyshahri, is promoted as the 'People's Experts List' or 'Friends of Hope and Moderation' in the elections of March 2016. Rafsanjani can only be compared to Khomeini and Montazeri among the first-tier leaders of the Islamic Republic because Khamenei also had no initiative during Khomeini's time and moved more in Khomeini's shadow, but Rafsanjani could challenge Khomeini in some decisions and policies. Rafsanjani and his companions have significantly narrowed the circle of politics in Iran over the past four decades, but he has remained active within that circle. What Khamenei and his close associates do not like about Rafsanjani is this very characteristic of disobedience and political defiance. He believes in the guardianship of the jurist, and when Khamenei has given an opinion, he has not openly opposed him, but outside of this circle, he offers views that directly challenge Khamenei's opinions. He explicitly rejects the individual leadership and parliamentary system (instead of a presidential one) that Khamenei supports. Even in cases where Khamenei has had explicit opinions and endorsed individuals (such as expressing dissatisfaction with the non-selection of Mesbah and Yazdi for the fifth Assembly of Experts), Rafsanjani has considered their removal beneficial for the country. It seems that the eighty-two-year-old Rafsanjani remains a serious challenge for Khamenei.