Shark of Persia: Obituary: Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died on January 8th

[avinash shahi]

IN DEATH as in life, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani defied categorisation.
He was a stalwart of a regime dubbed an exporter of terror and heresy.
Yet regional arch-foes such as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia mourned his
passing, as did the Great Satan itself, via a State Department press
briefing. At home, embattled reformists felt they had lost their prime
protector.
http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21714314-iranian-politician-was-82-obituary-akbar-hashemi-rafsanjani-died-january-8th
Ruthless guile was his hallmark. During his early years in power, the
death penalty was applied freely to dissidents, communists, Kurds and
Bahais. Foreign countries blamed Mr Rafsanjani for ordering murders of
émigrés in Paris, Berlin and Geneva, and terrorist attacks on a Jewish
cultural centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 and on American forces in
Saudi Arabia in 1996

Though a pragmatist to the point of cynicism, his career was rooted in
zealotry. His greatest political asset was his friendship with
Ayatollah Khomeini, the instigator of the Islamic revolution of 1979.
As memories of that upheaval faded, his ability to assert confidently
what the great man would have thought became ever-handier.

Other credentials were shakier. He had studied at the great seminary
in Qom, but he was no theologian; nor was he able to wear the black
turban reserved for the Prophet’s direct descendants. His family were
prosperous pistachio farmers, and his power base was as much the
bazaar as the mosque. He was dubbed kooseh, the shark, partly for
hidden menace, but also mockingly: his smooth skin sprouted only a
wispy beard, rather than the monumental growths of the heavyweight
theocrats.

Arrested ten times under the shah’s American-backed regime, jailed for
a total of more than four years (and on one winter’s day, he said,
tortured from dusk to dawn) he was not anti-Western on principle.
Indeed, he sniped at those who were: “if people believe we can live
behind a closed door, they are mistaken. We are in need of friends and
allies around the world.” Unlike his colleagues, he had travelled
widely in America and elsewhere and spoke, in private, excellent
English.

Those colleagues were often fuelled by rage. He was driven by
frustration: with Iran’s backwardness, isolation and outsiders’
bullying. His aim was to fortify the regime, not consume its strength
in pointless fights at home and abroad.

As the first speaker of the Majlis (parliament), he shaped the Islamic
Republic’s constitution, reconciling limited electoral mandates with
divine inspiration: a balancing act which few Muslim countries manage.
He helped make his old ally, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader.
It was a rare mistake: the two men spent the next 30 years tussling
for power.

He ended the war with Iraq, first gaining the military advantage, and
then arm-twisting his colleagues to accept a UN-brokered ceasefire. He
restored diplomatic ties with most Sunni Muslim countries: notably, he
was the only senior Iranian figure on cordial terms with the Saudi
leadership.





























He decisively backed Iran’s nuclear agreement with the West—outfacing
those who thought that any dealing with the enemy was weakness or
treason. The “world of tomorrow is one of negotiations, not the world
of missiles”, he tweeted in March.

Interests of state

Earlier. he was embroiled in the Iran-Contra affair, in which Ronald
Reagan’s administration illegally sold Iran American weapons, in
exchange for help in freeing hostages and financing (also illegally)
Nicaraguan anti-communist insurgents. When his role was revealed, he
had the source, Mehdi Hashemi, jailed, while, characteristically,
escaping opprobrium himself.

At home he eschewed sloganeering (he pressed for “Death to America”
chants to be dropped from Friday prayers) and decried fanaticism,
calling it “Islamic fascism”. Instead, he promoted economic change:
liberalisation, privatisation, cutting subsidies and building
infrastructure.

His political hero was Amir Kabir, a 19th-century reformist chief, of
whom he wrote an appreciative biography. He was also a leading critic
of the austere sexual and social mores of the Islamic Republic. It was
wrong, he said, to criminalise youngsters for following their
God-given and natural instincts.

His own instincts were finely tuned. As the occasion required, he
could be steely, charming, witty or lachrymose (especially in response
to his own rhetoric). He held court in lavish public buildings, while
living in the same house as before the revolution. His family thrived:
a business empire reputedly included the second-biggest airline, a
near-monopoly on the pistachio trade and the largest private
university. In 2003 Forbes magazine put his personal wealth at over $1
billion. Lies, said his fans. An underestimate, said his foes.

His biggest political setback was in 2005, when he failed to win a
third presidential term: hard-up Iranians voted crossly for the
puritanical, doctrinaire Mahmoud Ahmadinajad. Yet Mr Rasfanjani held
on to power as head of the Expediency Council, a previously obscure
power-broking body which links Iran’s theocratic and civil
institutions. Lately, he tacked towards reformism, backing political
and media freedoms in a speech in 2009, and supporting President
Hassan Rouhani’s campaign for re-election. Was it sincere? Anyone who
knew him, or Iranian politics, knew better than to ask

--
Avinash Shahi
Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU