Hashemi Rafsanjani

Hashemi Rafsanjani (Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani) , 1934-, Iranian religious and political leader, president of Iran (1989-97). A Shiite clergyman and supporter of Ayotallah Khomeini , Rafsanjani was imprisoned several times during the 1960s and 70s for his political activities. After the ouster of the Shah (see Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi ), Rafsanjani helped found the Islamic Republican party and built his political power base as speaker of the parliament (1980-89). From 1988 to 1989 he was also acting commander in chief of the armed forces. In 1989, Rafsanjani was elected president, receiving some 95% of the vote. A pragmatic conservative, he sought to revive Iran's badly flagging economy on free-market principles and moved to improve relations with the West, reestablish Iran as a regional power, and gradually reopen the country to foreign investment. He was reelected in 1993 with two thirds of the vote but was barred from seeking a third term in the 1997 elections. That year he was first appointed chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, which is responsible for resolving disputes between the parliament and Guardian Council concerning legislation (and in 2005 was also charged by Ayatollah Khamenei with exercising some of his oversight responsibilities as supreme leader). In 2000 he was narrowly elected to parliament, but he soon resigned his seat. In 2005 Rafsanjani again ran for the presidency, but despite support from reformists in the runoff election he lost to hardline conservative candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . In Dec., 2006, however, Rafsanjani won a landslide victory in his election to the Assembly of Experts in a reversal of the 2005 results. The previous month an Argentinian judge had issued a warrant for Rafsanjani's arrest in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center; Argentinian authorities accused Iran of backing the attack, a charge Iran rejected. Rafsanjani was elected speaker of the Assembly of Experts in 2007.

Rafsanjani, Hashemi Ali Akbar (b. 25 Aug. 1934). President of Iran 1989–97 Born in Rafsanjan, Kerman, he received religious instruction at Qom from the age of 14, and soon came under the spell of Khomeini. On account of his lack of formal education, he obtained the title of Hojjat al-Islam, just below that of an Ayatollah. He spent several periods in imprisonment during the regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi (1963–4, 1967, 1972, 1975–7), and was one of the leading organizers of the Iranian Revolution of 1978–9 until Khomeini's return from exile. A founding member of the Islamic Republican Party and a member of the Revolutionary Council, he became Khomeini's deputy in the Supreme Defence Council. After a power struggle with the hardline faction of the Revolutionary Council around Khomenei, he came to succeed Khomeini himself. A moderate only by Iranian standards, he did pursue a pragmatic policy which focused on consolidation of the Islamic order, rather than further reforms based on the Qu'ran. For instance, in 1994 privately owned banks were allowed to operate in Iran for the first time since the Revolution. Nevertheless, he continued to rule with the help of internal terror, while jealously guarding his ‘Islamic credentials’ in order not to be outmanoeuvred by hardliners within the theocracy.

Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar Hashemi (1934– ) Iranian statesman and religious leader, President (1989–97). A supporter and former pupil of Ayatollah Khomeini, in 1978 he helped organize the mass demonstrations that led to the shah's overthrow the following year. In 1988 he helped to bring an end to the Iran—Iraq War, having persuaded Khomeini to accept the UN's peace terms. When Khomeini died in 1989 Rafsanjani emerged from the ensuing power struggle as Iran's leader. He sought to improve Iran's relations with the West, and kept his country neutral during the Gulf War of 1991.