Iran: Rafsanjani Not Down, Not Out
By Kamal Nazer Yasin for ISN
Former Iranian president Aliakbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is no ordinary politician. Few individuals match him in versatility and sheer willpower. A leader of the underground political organization before the revolution and the country's leading politician afterward; the commander of the armed forces during the war; an apparent anti-reformist during the Khatami years; a badly defeated front-runner in the 2005 presidential race; and now the hardliners' implacable foe; Rafsanjani's career has seen many ups and downs in his half century of political trajectory.
During the reform era, his popularity rating was among the lowest of any living individual in the country, but after the hardliners' victory in 2005 and his subsequent reconciliation with the reformists, Rafsanjani's popularity is on the rebound. Today, he is universally recognized as the most important clerical foe of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his many backers. On top of this, Rafsanjani is positioning himself as a leading religious modernizer.
"In 2005, most people thought he was finished," said a veteran Iranian journalist to ISN Security Watch. "He was 71 years old and had been turned by the radicals into a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the system. No one expected him to return to the top again."
The New Battle Lines
Rafsanjani plotted his comeback patiently and deliberately. His first move after his crushing 2005 defeat was to make an electoral run for the Khobregan, or the Assembly of Experts. The Khobregan is a unique entity in Iran's complex state structure. It is a supra-governmental body of the clerical elite tasked with choosing a new Supreme leader in times of emergency. It can also in theory dismiss a sitting Supreme Leader if he is deemed incompetent or unfit for the job. As such, it can ensure that the Leader discharges his duties well and institutions under his control function properly.
In the 2006 elections for the Khobregan, scores of hardline clerics allied to Ahmadinejad's spiritual guru and adviser, the arch-conservative Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, had also declared their candidacy along with many old-line traditionalists. Running on the coattails of Ahmadinejad's political juggernaut, the radicals were hoping to permanently redraw the country's religious and political map in a new and uncharted direction. In that election, Rafsanjani, who had set himself up as the principal anti-radical champion, did surprisingly well. He won almost a million and a half votes in Tehran.
The electorate rejected all but two of the extremist clerics and, despite a distinct hardline presence, the Assembly's traditionalist core was maintained. But Rafsanjani knew that he needed much more to strengthen his hand than winning a quasi-popular mandate. In 2007, the death of the Assembly's chairman, Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, afforded the opportunity Rafsanjani had needed to bolster his position. In the internal elections for the new chairman, Rafsanjani managed to defeat the hard-liners' front-running candidate, Ali Janati, and win the coveted seat for himself. But the margins were razor thin. Of the 76 votes cast, he captured 41.
Immediately upon his triumph, Rafsanjani set about curbing the opposition's power. He declared that he would re-activate the supervisory prerogatives of another state entity, the Expediency Council - which he also chaired - over the Ahmadinejad government's performance. (In an April 1997 letter to Rafsanjani, the Supreme Leader, who was then under intense pressure from the popular movement, had invested the Council with parts of his own supervisory powers on the executive branch.) He also implied, albeit obliquely, that he wanted the Khobregan to exert some kind of oversight over Supreme Leader-controlled entities.
By late 2008, though, it turned out that the combined conservative hardline opposition was much more entrenched that many people had anticipated. In a 8 November 2008 interview, Rafsanjani revealed that the Supreme Leader had vetoed the Expediency Council’s oversight powers. “The Leader has revoked the oversight responsibility it had earlier bestowed upon the Council,” he told Fars News Agency. “If the Leader so chooses, he can assign the Council again by re-activating our functions,” he said, adding “the Leader had told me that since the new government was a relative newcomer and was unfamiliar with the 20-year economic plan, oversight was not needed.”
As for oversight by the Khobregan of Supreme Leader-controlled entities like the Revolutionary Guards and national radio and TV, Rafsanjani said: "Some members [of the Khobregan] had decided against this."
Religious Modernizer
The Shia reformation goes back at least several centuries, but as a grassroots movement among the clergy, it is only two decades old. Last year, Rafsanjani, who is known for his views on cultural and economic liberalism, surprised many observers with his interventions in the theological modernization debate.
In June 2008, he told a group of clerics in the holy city of Qum that there was an urgent need for what he termed "state theology." According to him, the clergy was falling behind the times by not addressing specific political issues stemming from the political exigencies of governance. He called for the high-ranking Shia clergy to establish an entirely new theological framework for remedying the situation.
Then in late December, he dropped a bombshell by calling for the creation of a "fatwa council" and "the specialization of ejtihad (or theological innovation)." At present, it is customary for the faithful to follow the religious edicts and injunctions of one Grand Ayatollah. According to Rafsanjani's suggestion, a committee of Grand Ayatollahs would weigh in on critical theological matters and he would have each top cleric to specialize in certain fields rather than pontificate on any knowledge or practice known to man.
The Opposition Strikes Back
Last year, while Rafsanjani increased his criticism of Ahmadinejad's foreign policy and positioned himself on the frontlines of Islamic modernization, the opposition was not entirely idle. They implied that his theological initiatives were aimed at weakening the Supreme Leader's national and supra-national pre-eminence and therefore had nefarious motives behind them; and last October, the hardline clerics inside the Khobregan asked for a new secretariat election to be held before the Persian new year (21 March), although the Assembly's leadership covers a two-year term and the vote for Rafsanjani had been taken in 2007.
They reasoned that Rafsanjani's election was made possible by the death of the former chairman, Ali Meshkini. Therefore, they argued, Rafsanjani's term had started in 2006 when Meshkini was elected and not 2007.
Rafsanjani responded. In late February, he led a large clerical and civilian delegation on a state visit to neighboring Iraq, where he was feted like a head of a state. Politicians, including the president and the prime minister, welcomed him with great pomp and circumstance and held high-level discussions with him while Ahmadinejad had earlier received a token reception by Iraqi officials.
More importantly, Rafsanjani met with all four Grand Ayatollahs of Iraq. His visit to Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was particularly significant: In a carefully leaked report, the venerable ayatollah was quoted as effectively endorsing Rafsanjani's various positions. According to the website Ayandenews, Sistani told his visitor that he been familiar with his [Rafsanjani's] writings and had "expressed concern with the possibility that such moderate views were forced into isolation in today's Iran."
The influential website added that the ayatollah had counseled more moderation in taking positions on foreign policy matters by the Iranian statesmen since "the situation of Shias outside Iran is very different than inside" and taking radical positions "could create divisions among Shias."
The response from Iran's hardliners was vigorous if not ferocious. The government-owned newspaper Iran made a blistering attack on Rafsanjani in a 5 March editorial, just five days before the new Khobregan vote.
"Certain political personalities," said the editorial, "clinging to the illusion that they played a prominent role in the revolution and during the war, and unsympathetic to the needs of the people[…] in order to restore their former status, use unofficial channels to divert the revolution and to direct the system and society to a secular government with a religious veneer.
"We advise those who have been duped by this movement to quickly disengage themselves from this group because when the time comes for the people to settle accounts, there would be no time to distinguish the main culprits from others."
According to published reports, on the day of the vote, Rafsanjani, in the old tradition of clerical collegiality, offered to defer his position to an elder member of the assembly, Ayatollah Kani, who declined. Then the opposition announced their own candidate: Ayatollah Yazdi.
The secret vote was a vindication of Rafsanjani and a partial repudiation of the hardliners. Rafsanjani received 51 out of the 77 votes cast , Yazdi garnered only 26 votes: a much larger margin than the last vote. In addition, the present judiciary chief, Ayatollah Shahroodi, a Rafsanjani ally who had failed to make it to the secretariat in the last vote, became the first vice speaker.
“But this is just the beginning of the fight not its end,” said the journalist speaking on the condition of anonymity. “Like an old western film, Rafasanjani and his allies are positioning themselves for the final showdown.
“As the economy suffers from mismanagement and the effect of the sanctions and as Iran’s international standing keeps going downhill, the Rafsanjani camp will be well-positioned to confront the other side from a strong position.”