Clarifying Hashemi Rafsanjani's Record in Fifteen Questions and Answers

Aspects of Hashemi Rafsanjani's behaviors and roles in the affairs of the country remain ambiguous for many social classes, and the younger generation is largely unaware of them. Neither he nor his family, nor the newspapers and websites close to Rafsanjani have made significant efforts to clarify these ambiguities or provide information. In this article, I will raise some of these ambiguities and questions and attempt to answer them based on facts. 1. How corrupt were Hashemi and his family? For about three decades, various claims regarding the corruption of Hashemi and his family members have been published both domestically and abroad. However, apart from the case of receiving bribes from Total and Statoil companies in the Kowsar contract by Mehdi Hashemi (amounting to approximately 60 million dollars, the exact share of Mehdi Hashemi in this is unclear), no other cases have been published in court or in investigative press reports. There is no doubt that officials of the Islamic Republic abuse power and are corrupt (due to their lack of transparency), but the extent and type of their corruption vary. 2. What was his role in the Cultural Revolution? In 1980, Rafsanjani was a liaison between some Islamic student associations and Khomeini, conveying students' demands for Khomeini's approval to close universities. It is not realistic to say he directed the project of closing universities, as each student association made decisions independently through voting regarding their actions. 3. What role did he play in the dismissal of Montazeri? Rafsanjani did not consider someone like Montazeri suitable for leadership (due to his associates, critical views of institutions, and disregard for the wishes of the five-member group) and perceived Montazeri's rise to power as a reduction of his own power and a departure from political realism. He supported Khamenei's ascension in the Assembly of Experts because he thought he could work better with him. However, there is no evidence that Rafsanjani orchestrated Montazeri's removal from the vice leadership; in this matter, Riyshahri and Ahmad Khomeini played much more prominent roles. 4. Did Hashemi and Khamenei kill Seyyed Ahmad Khomeini? This claim is based solely on a conspiracy theory. Emadeddin Baghi, a writer and journalist residing in Iran, stated that years after Ahmad Khomeini's death, Mohammad Niazi, then head of the Armed Forces Judicial Organization, told Hassan Khomeini, his son, that Saeed Imami, former Deputy Minister of Intelligence, had confessed to killing Ahmad Khomeini in addition to the murders of intellectuals and writers. Niazi denied these statements. Ahmad Khomeini's illness and the confession obtained from Saeed Imami under torture render his words on this matter unreliable. Even if Saeed Imami's role in this matter is confirmed, he had a closer relationship with Khamenei than with Hashemi Rafsanjani. 5. Did he really direct the chain murders of the 1990s? The chain murders of writers (between 80 to 250 people according to various accounts) in the 1990s were directed by the Ministers of Intelligence (Fallahian and later Daryaei Najafabadi) and carried out by security forces. Their religious edicts were issued by clerics like Mojtaba Tehrani, Khoshvaqt, and the Ministers of Intelligence who claimed to be jurists. Due to the role of the Ministry of Intelligence in these murders, the head of the government and the leader of the Islamic Republic are responsible and one day must be held accountable in court for their accusations; however, it is unclear whether Rafsanjani issued direct orders for each murder. Assigning blame to individuals cannot create a reality. Due to Rafsanjani's reduced power in the second term, especially in the security and political ministries, and Khamenei's increased power during this period, the possibility of this flow being directed by the leader's office is greater. The edict issuers were closer to the leader's office than to Rafsanjani. Khamenei, with theories like cultural invasion and cultural shock, created a suitable ground for portraying political and cultural non-elite individuals as enemies, and intelligence forces executed his wishes through murder. 6. Was Rafsanjani the architect of construction? This title was created by Rafsanjani's close associates. When applying this title, three points should be considered: 1) If by construction, it means rebuilding the destruction of the war period, this has not been achieved in many damaged cities even 27 years after the end of the war. Parts of Khorramshahr were essentially abandoned, and the face of Abadan has not yet returned to its pre-war state. 2) During Hashemi's government, large construction projects such as road construction, dam building, power plant construction, airport development, and large industrial factory construction were pursued, but some of them were not completed during his term (such as Tehran Airport); some were inaugurated multiple times, and some (like power plants) were completed. 3) Some of the projects during the construction period brought nothing but damage to the country. These include dam projects that have contributed to the critical water situation in Iran. 7. Did Hashemi impose the acceptance of Resolution 598 on Khomeini? Contrary to the views of some of Rafsanjani's staunch opponents in the IRGC, who have not yet given up on the dream of conquering Jerusalem, it was not Rafsanjani who handed the poison chalice to Khomeini. The wrong decisions and incompetent commanders of the war led to a situation where Iran was forced to accept Resolution 598 without significant achievements. The only thing Rafsanjani did (unlike the IRGC commanders) was to convey the realities of the war and the country's economy to Khomeini so that he could save the Islamic Republic from collapse. 8. What was Rafsanjani's role in the Mykonos restaurant assassination? A German court in 1992 accused Rafsanjani of approving the assassination of three members of the Democratic Party and their translator at the Mykonos restaurant. He was convicted in this court. The Mykonos trial identified the leaders of the Iranian government, namely Ali Khamenei, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Ali Akbar Velayati (the leader, president, and foreign minister at the time) as the instigators of the Mykonos assassination, and Ali Fallahian, the then Minister of Intelligence, was also identified as directly responsible for executing their orders. 9. What was Rafsanjani's role in the AMIA bombing (Jewish center) in Argentina? Argentine officials have accused high-ranking leaders of the Islamic Republic, including Rafsanjani, of coordinating the bombing of the AMIA center in Buenos Aires in 1994, which killed 85 people. In 2007, the Interpol General Assembly confirmed the ruling of Nisman (the Argentine Attorney General) and issued arrest warrants for five individuals. Interpol did not issue this warrant for three individuals, namely Rafsanjani, Velayati, and the Iranian ambassador to Argentina in 1994, not because there was insufficient evidence, but because the laws of this organization prohibit the prosecution of state leaders. 10. What was Rafsanjani's record in the field of culture and art? Rafsanjani's concern during his presidency was "construction," and he delegated cultural issues to Khamenei and his close clerics. His presidency was one of the darkest periods for cultural and artistic figures in Iran: from murder and intimidation and arrests to censorship and confiscation, from burning cinemas and bookstores to various fabrications. Rafsanjani's belief in freedom of expression belonged to a time when he himself was engaged in writing after losing power (after 2009). Unfortunately, part of the cultural and artistic community in Iran has forgotten this issue. 11. Was Rafsanjani from a wealthy family and inherited his wealth? This is not the case. Those who have visited his paternal home in Bahraman say that the family's house was an ordinary one. There is also no information available about the wealth of Rafsanjani and his family members, and no judgment can be made in this regard. Forbes magazine estimated Rafsanjani's wealth and that of his family at hundreds of millions of dollars in 2003, but it did not clarify the details (except for a horse racing complex and several recreational complexes in Dubai and Malaysia) nor did it mention its sources. 12. Did Rafsanjani monopolize Iran's pistachio exports? This claim, which has appeared both in Iran and in an American newspaper (The New York Times), is baseless. Rafsanjani, like thousands of others in Rafsanjan, had a pistachio orchard and likely expanded them in the years following the establishment of the Islamic Republic (like many other orchardists), but neither officially nor unofficially did he and his family hold a monopoly on pistachio exports in Iran. 13. Did he financially support some opposition websites abroad? No source has officially confirmed this, but the close relationships of individuals like Ata Mohajerani with him and Mehdi Hashemi's efforts abroad to influence in favor of his family in the political and media space fueled such suspicions. 14. Was he a reformist? He never called himself a reformist and did not defend reformist programs. He sought change not to move towards a democratic, open system that respects human rights, is secular, and governed by the rule of law, but to preserve the system and the rule of the clerics. Some Western governments and media wished he were a reformist and referred to him as such because they wanted a party in Iran for negotiation, and if that were not the case, they wanted to imagine it. Reformists approached him because they wanted to find an ally in difficult circumstances, not because they considered him a reformist. 15. Did Rafsanjani take many secrets of the Islamic Republic to the grave? Some are interested in the idea that there are secrets in non-transparent and undemocratic regimes and they are engaged in discovering these secrets. However, in these regimes, there are not many significant secrets, or if there are, one can understand personalities and events without them. The actions taken by these types of governments have been previously carried out in dozens, if not hundreds, of regimes, and one can find the unspoken and unheard internal matters based on external behavior. Corruption, repression, fraud, and lies permeate this regime from top to bottom. Rafsanjani has not taken many secrets to the grave in this regard, and one can understand the Islamic Republic without his unspoken words.