Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, born in 1934, Iranian politician and president of Iran (1989-1997). He was born in Rafsanjan, Kermān Province. Rafsanjani was educated in local religious schools and later at the Qom theological seminary, where, as a student of Ruhollah Khomeini (later named leader of Iran), he graduated in the late 1950s as a hojatolislam, a Shia clerical rank just below that of ayatollah. Opposed, like his mentor, to the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, Rafsanjani became the exiled Khomeini’s chief agent in Iran, was arrested on several occasions, and spent three years in prison (1975-1977) for his activities. Upon the overthrow of the shah in 1979 and Khomeini’s assumption of power, Rafsanjani was appointed to the Revolutionary Council. His loyalty to Khomeini, combined with considerable political skills, elevated him to the leadership of the Islamic Republic Party and, soon afterward, of the Majlis, the Iranian parliament.

Rafsanjani was widely criticized in Iran for his arms-for-hostages deal with members of the administration of United States President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), which touched off the Iran-Contra scandal in the United States in 1986. In the power struggle that took place after the death of Khomeini in 1989, however, Rafsanjani emerged as the president of Iran with substantially increased powers. Regarded as a practical political leader familiar with the world outside Iran, Rafsanjani condemned both the United States and Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and kept Iran from direct involvement. After the war he continued to carve out a middle ground between his more conservative religious colleagues’ pressures for insularity and his own inclination toward modernization, and worked to renew close ties with the West. At the same time he was also accused of ordering the murders of certain opponents and of collaborating with China on nuclear weapon development. Rafsanjani was reelected in 1993 but stepped down in 1997, since the Iranian constitution limits the president from seeking a third term.