Who is hashemi rafsanjani

In , Khomeini appointed Rafsanjani a member of the Council of the Islamic Revolution, and he was a co-founder of the Islamic Republic party in February In May that year, he escaped an assassination attempt. In , he was elected speaker of the Iranian parliament and served until From then until his death he was chairman of the expediency council.

In , he became chairman of the crucial assembly of experts, serving until He often sailed close to the wind. The conservatives strongly opposed this choice but Khomeini depended on Rafsanjani for political advice. Brilliant at networking and wheeler-dealing, Rafsanjani was always a powerful figure. When he visited China and Japan in he was received as a head of state. This was one of many instances when he enraged the then prime minister, Mir Hossein Mousavi , by dominating foreign policy.

Rafsanjani was clever at appealing to liberals and, where necessary, hardliners alike. The hardliners were pitted against him and fellow liberals when the US arms-for-hostages scandal in was revealed in the Lebanese press. Montazeri and his relative Mehdi Hashemi were alarmed by this rapprochement with the US. The radicals drew them into a power base from which the conservatives might grasp the leadership when Khomeini died.

Released from prison for the last time in , Rafsanjani helped to orchestrate the mass demonstrations that led to the downfall of the Shah in January Following the triumphant return of Khomeini, he became prominent in the new Islamic government, acquiring a reputation for his ability and unswerving loyalty to the Ayatollah. As acting minister of the interior he was involved in the purging of dissidents in the early s. Rafsanjani's own doubts about aspects of the regime seem to date from the mids, when he became privately convinced of the futility of the war with Iraq.

Appointed acting commander-in-chief of the armed forces in , he successfully persuaded Khomeini to accept UN peace terms. By this time he had also decided that Iran's blanket hostility to the West was unsustainable and in he became involved in the secret diplomacy with US negotiators that erupted as the Irangate scandal. In the power struggle that followed Khomeini's death Rafsanjani outwitted more extreme figures and emerged at the head of his country's affairs.

As president he performed a careful balancing act, on the one hand working patiently to improve Iran's relations with the West and on the other appeasing hardline Muslim opinion on such issues as the Rushdie affair. He kept his country studiedly neutral during the Gulf War of Having been re-elected with a reduced majority in , Rafsanjani faced problems on several fronts during his second term: these included deepening economic and financial crisis, growing opposition from traditionalist clerics, and the imposition of US sanctions in response to Iran's alleged involvement in international terrorism.

He retired in , being succeeded by the liberal reformer Ayatollah Mohammed Khatemi. Subjects: History — Contemporary History post View all related items in Oxford Reference ».

In the mids, he was the critical player on the Iranian side in the Iran-Contra affair, when the United States, under President Ronald Reagan, agreed to provide Iran with anti-tank and surface-to-surface missiles in exchange for the release of American hostages held by Iranian surrogates in Lebanon. During the Iran-Iraq war, some argue that Rafsanjani emerged as a clear voice for peace.

After a series of dramatic offensives in , Iranian forces had succeeded in pushing Iraq back across the border. That decision proved disastrous: The war dragged on another six years, with terrible human costs. Rafsanjani, the pragmatist, realized Iran was exhausted and the war could not be won. On the other hand, there is no indication that he opposed the bloody massacre of thousands of members of left-wing opposition groups already in Iranian prisons near the end of the war.

Rafsanjani also served as head of the Expediency Council, a group that advises the supreme leader on policy, and was a long-term member of the Assembly of Experts, the body that selects the supreme leader.

Rafsanjani and like-minded members of the inner circle may have thought Khamenei would be pliant; they would soon be disabused of this assumption. As president, he tried to ease social controls, open up the economy to the private sector, and improve relations with the outside world, particularly the United States.

He also launched a program of reconstruction to deal with the physical damage inflicted by the war with Iraq. Pursuing ties with the United States, he offered a billion-dollar contract to the American oil firm Conoco—a deal that was blocked by President Bill Clinton, for reasons that remain unclear.

Rafsanjani, however, displayed little interest in easing controls over the press and political activity. While Rafsanjani, during his first four years as president, was more influential than Khamenei, that dynamic would eventually reverse. Towards the end of his presidency, Rafsanjani encouraged a number of the technocrats who had worked with him to form an organization they named the Executives of Construction, to push for policies favoring economic development.