Iranian former President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani is best remembered for his Friday prayer sermon on July 17th 2009, which gave the reform movement a “powerful boost”. In his sermon, he criticized the government for losing the trust of many Iranians, and called for the release of the protesters arrested since the election. As the highest-ranking official within the Iranian clerical regime to oppose the election result, his role in the reform movement was unparalleled.
But as I have discussed in a previous blog, excluding the Friday sermon, Rafsanjani does not have the credentials as a reformist. In his presidency, he is accused of executing political dissidents, Communists, Kurds, and Bahais. In his other big sermon at the Tehran University in 1999, he fully supported the government crackdown on students asking for more freedom and praised the state for their use of force. And it looks like that Rafsanjani is now coming back to his roots. Rafsanjani is now urging Iran’s political factions to follow orders from the supreme leader. The BBC has quoted that Iranian official news agency Irna as stating that Rafsanjani has called for action to foster unity:
“[Mr Rafsanjani] referred to the observance of the guidelines set by the supreme leader and confronting lawbreakers as a necessity under the present conditions,” Irna reported after a meeting of Iran’s Expediency Council, the country’s top political arbitration body, which he chairs.
Irna said he also called for “sympathy between officials and the public as a necessity for the country’s passage from the current domestic problems and for confronting the problems created by foreigners”.
He also reportedly reiterated a call to politicians and the media to “avoid stirring schisms… and take steps toward the creation of unity”.
Photo taken from the New York Times.