Iran after Rafsanjani
Rafsanjani
is not a moderate.
He
has been a major factor in all crimes committed by the Iranian regime. Maryam Rajavi has repeatedly pointed out & MEK also repeatedly with the actual documents have disclosed
Iran
after Rafsanjani
Dying
at the age of 82 from a heart attack on Sunday, former Iranian president Ali
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had a long record of guiding the regime’s lethal
measures domestically and abroad, including suicide bombings and eliminating
exiled dissidents. Such an image is far from the “moderate” that Western media
found in him.
Rafsanjani
was known for his central role in Iranian politics. From the 1979 revolution
forward, he placed himself amongst the inner circle of regime founder and first
supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini. He served as the regime’s parliamentary
speaker in the 1980s, while in parallel acted as Khomeini’s envoy to supervise
operations in the Iran-Iraq War.
As
Khomeini died and the war wound down, Rafsanjani assumed the mantle of
presidency in 1989 and played a significant part in Ali Khamenei’s rise as
Khomeini’s successor. Rafsanjani continued his political life by chairing the
Assembly of Experts -- in charge of appointing the supreme leader and acting as
an oversight body over his role -- and move on to the Expediency Council before
his death, both advising Khamenei and finalizing conflicts between the
ultra-conservative Guardian Council and the parliament.
Following
eight years of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, in 2005 Rafsanjani made an effort
to reclaim this position. This campaign ended in humiliation as Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad assumed the presidency. For the next eight years Rafsanjani
publicly criticized and denounced Ahmadinejad's policies and actions,
distancing himself from the hardliners and further attempting to portray
himself as a “reformist” favoring warm relations with the West.
espite
serious differences and rivalry over power and influence, Khamenei fully
comprehended his need for Rafsanjani as a stabilizing factor and could never
fully eliminate him. Rafsanjani’s death is now evaluated as the loss of a
significant pillar for the entire regime, as explained by Iranian opposition
leader Maryam Rajavi, president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
(NCRI).
Rajavi
declared in a statement on Sunday defining Rafsanjani’s death as the downfall
of “one of the two pillars and key to the equilibrium of the religious fascism
ruling Iran.”
“Rafsanjani, who had
always been the regime’s number two, acted as its balancing factor and played a
decisive role in its preservation. Now, the regime will lose its internal and
external equilibrium,” she added, also predicting the “approaching overthrow”
of the mullahs’ regime.
For
38 years Rafsanjani “played a critical role in suppression at home and export
of terrorism abroad, as well as in the quest to acquire nuclear weapons,”
Rajavi underscored.
In
2006 Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman filed suit against Rafsanjani
for his role in one of the deadliest Iran-supported terrorist attacks abroad --
the 1994 suicide truck bombing targeting the AMIA Jewish community center in
Buenos Aires. The massive blast leveled entire buildings and resulted in the
death of 85 people with hundreds more wounded. The investigators specifically
issued arrest warrants for Rafsanjani and seven other senior Iranian regime
figures.
Rafsanjani
also ordered numerous assassinations of dissidents in exile, including former
Iranian ambassador the United Nations and prominent human rights activist Dr.
Kazem Rajavi. Iranian assassins murdered him in 1990 near his Geneva home. Swiss
investigators raised charges against Tehran and authorities issued an arrest
warrant for Rafsanjani’s spy chief Ali Fallahian.
The
March 1993 assassination of 42-year-old NCRI Rome envoy Mohammad Hossein Naghdi
in the Italian capital and the February 1996 murder of the NCRI’s refugee envoy
Zahra Rajabi in Istanbul were also ordered by Rafsanjani.
He
also had a particular enmity against the People’s Mojahedin Organization of
Iran (PMOI/MEK), the central entity in the NCRI umbrella group.
“Four rulings are a
must for [MEK members]: 1-- Be killed. 2 -- Be hanged. 3 -- Arms and legs be
amputated. 4 -- Be separated from society,” Rafsanjani is quoted in saying back
in 1981. As Khomeini’s right hand, he also presided over the summer 1988
massacre, sending over 30,000 political prisoners to the gallows throughout
Iran.
Rafsanjani
has been a balancing factor through the course of the past four decades. The
regime in its entirety has suffered a major defeat and will significantly
decline down the road.
Khamenei’s
focus will be to prevent this development from sparking into an uncontrollable
turn of events for the entire establishment. Considering this regime’s past
approach, there is a high probably of Tehran’s mullahs resorting to enhancing
their effort to spread violence, exporting extremism and terrorism, and
promoting Islamic fundamentalism across the region and beyond.
Amir
Basiri is a human rights activist and analyst. He tweets at @amir_bas
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