an 8, 4:40 PM EST
Rafsanjani,
Iran leader whose life mirrored nation's, dies
By NASSER KARIMI
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's former
President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died Sunday after a decades-long career in
the ruling elite, where his moderate views were not always welcome but his
cunning guided him through revolution, war and the country's turbulent
politics.
The political survivor's life spanned the
trials of Iran's modern history, from serving as a close aide to Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini during the 1979 Islamic Revolution to acting as a go-between
in the Iran-Contra deal. He helped found Iran's contested nuclear program, but
later backed the accord with world powers to limit it in exchange for sanctions
relief.
Rafsanjani, who showed ruthlessness while
in power but later pushed for reforms, died Sunday after suffering a heart
attack, state media reported. He was 82.
Iranian media said he was hospitalized
north of Tehran earlier Sunday, where doctors performed CPR in vain for nearly
an hour and a half before declaring him dead.
A female state newscaster's voice quivered
as she read the news. Rafsanjani, "after a life full of restless efforts
in the path of Islam and revolution, had departed for lofty heaven," she
said.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
called Rafsanjani an "old friend and comrade" and said his loss is
"difficult and life-decreasing." The government announced three days
of mourning, and a funeral was expected to be held on Tuesday.
Rafsanjani served as president from 1989
to 1997, during a period of significant changes in Iran. At the time, the
country was struggling to rebuild its economy after a devastating 1980s war
with Iraq, while also cautiously allowing some wider freedoms, as seen in
Iran's highly regarded film and media industry.
He also oversaw key developments in Iran's
nuclear program by negotiating deals with Russia to build an energy-producing
reactor in Bushehr, which finally went into service in 2011 after long delays.
Behind the scenes, he directed the secret purchase of technology and equipment
from Pakistan and elsewhere.
In an interview published in October,
Rafsanjani acknowledged the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, which killed some 1
million people, led Iran to consider seeking nuclear weapons.
"Our basic doctrine was always for a
peaceful nuclear application, but it never left our mind that if one day we
should be threatened and it was imperative, we should be able to go down the
other path," he said. "But we never went."
The cleric managed to remain within Iran's
ruling theocracy after leaving office, but an attempt to return to the
presidency in 2005 was dashed by the electoral victory of the more hard-line
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Rafsanjani was later branded a dissenter by many
conservatives for his harsh criticism of the crackdown that followed
Ahmadinejad's re-election in 2009.
But after years of waning influence,
Rafsanjani was handed an unexpected political resurgence with the 2013 victory
of a fellow moderate, Hassan Rouhani, giving him an insider role in efforts
that would culminate in the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Some analysts believe Rafsanjani was kept
within the ruling fold as a potential mediator with America and its allies in
the standoff over Iran's nuclear program. His past stature as a trusted
Khomeini ally also offered him political protection. Rafsanjani was a top
commander in the war with Iraq and played a key role in convincing Khomeini to
accept a cease-fire after years of crippling stalemate.
His image, however, also had darker
undertones. He was named by prosecutors in Argentina among Iranian officials
suspected of links to a 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that
killed 85 people. Some Iranian reformers accused him of involvement in the
slaying of liberals and dissidents during his presidency - charges that he
denied and that were never pursued by Iranian authorities.
"The title of Islamic Republic is not
just a formality," he said in 2009 in the chaos after Ahmadinejad's re-election.
"Rest assured, if one of those two
aspects is damaged we will lose our revolution. If it loses its Islamic aspect,
we will go astray. If it loses its republican aspect, (the Islamic Republic)
will not be realized. Based on the reasons that I have offered, without people
and their vote there would be no Islamic system."
Rafsanjani - a portly man with only sparse
and wispy chin hairs in contrast to the full beards worn by most Islamic
clerics in Iran - first met Khomeini in the Shiite seminaries of Qom in the
1950s and later became a key figure in the Islamic uprising that toppled the
U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979.
He was elected as head of Iran's
parliament in 1980 and served until 1989, when he was elected for the first of
two four-year terms as president.
Here, Rafsanjani began to build his
multilayered - and sometimes contradictory - political nature: A supporter of
free enterprise, a relative pragmatist toward foreign affairs and an
unforgiving leader who showed no mercy to any challenges to his authority.
Rafsanjani took a dim view of state
control of the economy, even in the turbulent years after the Islamic
Revolution, and he encouraged private businesses, development of Tehran's stock
market and ways to boost Iranian exports.
He built roads and connected villages to
electrical, telephone and water networks for the first time, earning the title
of Commander of Reconstruction by his supporters.
There were certain self-interests at play
as well.
Rafsanjani was assumed to be the head of a
family-run pistachio business, which grew to become one of Iran's largest
exporters and provided the financial foundation for a business empire that
would eventually include construction companies, an auto assembly plant, vast
real estate holdings and a private airline. In 2003, he was listed among Iran's
"millionaire mullahs" by Forbes magazine.
His economic policies won him praise from
Iran's elite and merchant classes, but brought bitterness from struggling workers
seeking greater state handouts. Rafsanjani also faced warnings from the ruling
theocracy about pushing too far. None of his reforms dared to undercut the vast
power of the Revolutionary Guard - which Rafsanjani briefly commanded, and
which controls every key defense and strategic program.
Rafsanjani's complex legacy also was
shaped by the times.
He took over the presidency in a critical
time of transition just after the death of Khomeini. He tried to make overtures
for better ties with the U.S. after the American-led invasion of Kuwait in 1991
to drive out Iraqi forces, arguing that Iran paid too high a price for its
diplomatic freeze with Washington.
But he could not overcome opposition from
Iranian hard-liners and failed to win the backing of Khomeini's successor as
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, for bold foreign policy moves. He also
angered the West by strengthening Iran's ties to armed groups such as Lebanon's
Hezbollah.
"One of the wrong things we did, in
the revolutionary atmosphere, was constantly to make enemies," he said in
a 1987 interview. "We pushed those who could have been neutral into
hostility."
Rafsanjani was born in 1934 in the village
of Bahraman in southeastern Iran's pistachio-growing region of Rafsanjan.
He was jailed for several years under the
shah. He then helped organize the network of mullahs that became Khomeini's
revolutionary underground. In 1965, he is reputed to have provided the handgun
for the assassination of Iran's prime minister, Hassan Ali Mansoor.
Only months after the revolution,
Rafsanjani was shot once in the stomach by gunmen from one of the groups vying
for power amid the political turmoil. He was not seriously wounded - and
neither was his wife, who jumped in front to shield him from the attack.
"Great men of history do not
die," Khomeini said in announcing that Rafsanjani had survived.
During the 1980s, he used his links with
Lebanese Shiite extremists to help secure the release of Western hostages in
Lebanon and was a key middleman - identified as "Raf" in Pentagon
documents - in the secret Iran-Contra dealings to funnel U.S. arms to Iran in
exchange for money used to fund Nicaraguan rebels.
Although Rafsanjani was seen by Washington
as a potential ice breaker, his views were far from solidly pro-Western and
displayed conflicted positions.
Shortly after becoming president in 1989,
he hinted that Palestinians should kill Westerners to retaliate for Israeli
actions in the occupied territories.
"It is not hard to kill Americans or
Frenchmen," he said.
In February 1994, Rafsanjani survived a
second assassination attempt. A lone gunman fired at him as he was speaking to
mark the 15th anniversary of the revolution. Unhurt and unshaken, Rafsanjani
calmed a crowd of thousands and continued his speech.
The Iran-Contra fallout is an often-told
tale about the dangers of crossing Rafsanjani.
After word was leaked to a Beirut magazine
about Rafsanjani's involvement, he ordered the arrest of the source, a senior
adviser to the ruling clerics named Mehdi Hashemi, for treason and other
charges. Hashemi and others were executed in September 1987.
Later, however, he was dismayed at the
brutal crackdown against opposition groups and others claiming Ahmadinejad won
re-election in June 2009 through vote rigging sanctioned by the ruling
theocracy.
Khamenei decided to throw his backing
behind Ahmadinejad, effectively snubbing Rafsanjani and his complaints. Later,
Rafsanjani fell short on efforts to mobilize enough moderate clerics in the
Assembly of Experts - the only group with the power to dismiss the supreme
leader - to force possible concessions from Khamenei on the postelection
clampdowns.
Rafsanjani was forced out of the post in
2011, but remained as head of the Expediency Council, an advisory body that
mediates disputes between the parliament and the Guardian Council, a watchdog
group controlled by hard-line clerics.
However, his family did not escape so
easily. In January 2012, a court sentenced Rafsanjani's daughter, Faezeh
Hashemi, to six months in prison on charges of criticizing the ruling system. A
court in 2015 sentenced his younger son, Mahdi, to a 10-year prison term over
embezzlement and security charges.
Rafsanjani is survived by his wife, Effat
Marashi, and five children.
On Sunday night, Rouhani and others visit
the hospital to see Rafsanjani one final time before his body was taken to a
mosque ahead of burial.
"He was a revolutionary and
freedom-seeking cleric who stuck up for the peoples' votes," said Saeed
Karimi, a supporter outside the hospital. "It is such a pity that the
nation has lost a political leader and guide."
Others were critical. Alireza Jafarzadeh,
deputy director of the U.S. Office of the National Council of Resistance of
Iran, the political affiliate of the exiled Mujahedeen-e-Khalq group, said in a
statement that Rafsanjani "was instrumental in the early 1980's for
initiating the nuclear weapons program of Iran, was behind the state-sponsored
terrorism of Iran, and was behind the chain murder of intellectuals in Iran
when he was president."
---
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell and
Adam Schreck in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Edith M. Lederer at the United
Nations contributed to this report. Biographical material in this story was written
by former AP staffer Brian Murphy.
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