News over the weekend that Akbar HashemiRafsanjani has entered the racefor Iranian president producedsurprise and elation in some quartersthat politics in the Islamic Republic are not completely dead.But assuming Rafsanjani survives vetting by the systems clerical-run Guardian Council, his chances for victory against conservatives supported by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should not be overestimated. Any enthusiasm for Rafsanjanis candidacy should be tempered by his uneven past record as president in domestic and foreign affairs, Irans bipolar political system and the difficulty facing any Iranian leader in dealing with the countrys sharp downward trajectory.
Compared to the reckless Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who defeated Rafsanjani in a runoff election in 2005, the wily old pol known as the Shark for his guile and his wispy beard might seem like a welcome return to pragmatism. A pillar of the 1979 revolution, Rafsanjani, who won two terms in 1989 and 1993, has more experience than anyone in the system including Khamenei, who Rafsanjani helped promote to supreme leader in 1989 in managing Irans relations with the West and boosting the nations economic performance.
His proto-party, the Servants of Construction, engineered Irans recovery after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, when oil production and revenues slumped to their lowest point. Rafsanjani also made overtures to the United States and helped to free US hostages in Lebanon. Those overtures were unsuccessful, however, in large part because of Irans support for anti-Israel groups and acts of terrorism. Iran has been blamed for the 1992 assassination of Kurdish dissidents in a Berlin restaurant, the destruction of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina that killed more than 80 people and an attack on a US barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 that killed 19 Americans. At home, Rafsanjani presided at the start of so-called serial murders of 80 Iranian writers and dissidents.
It was under Rafsanjani that the US adopted a policy of dual containment of Iraq and Iran that included an embargo on US involvement in Irans oil sector and the rejection of a mega-deal offered to Conoco. The United States also imposed the first so-called secondary sanctions during this period the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 which threatened foreign companies investing in Irans oil and gas sector.
Even though Rafsanjani threw his support behind Mohammad Khatami in 1997 by law, Iranian presidents can only serve two terms consecutively Irans reform movement never fully trusted Rafsanjani and he came in last in parliamentary elections dominated by Reformists in 2000.
In 2005, as Khatami was ending his second term, Rafsanjani ran again for president. While there were allegations of fraud Reformist Mehdi Karroubi asserted that he, not Ahmadinejad, came in second in the first round and thus should have competed against Rafsanjani Ahmadinejads landslide win against Rafsanjani in the second round appears to have been legitimate. Iranians preferred Ahmadinejad at the time because he was a genuine man of the people who lived in a modest home in a working-class suburb in southeast Tehran. In contrast, Rafsanjani, whose family of modest pistachio growers has become colossally rich since 1979, has a palatial abode in upscale north Tehran.
While the family is believed to remain immensely wealthy, Irans brutal politics have not been kind to Rafsanjani and his kin, particularly since 2009, when they sided with Mir Hossein Mousavi and the Green Movement against Ahmadinejad. In March 2011,Rafsanjani was removedas head of the Assembly of Experts, a body of clerics tasked with supervising and choosing the supreme leader. Rafsanjani has also lost control of a system of free universities that he helped create and technocrats associated with him have been largely swept from government offices and replaced by less capable cronies of Ahmadinejad.
Even as Ahmadinejad has also fallen out of favor, the Rafsanjani clan has continued to be marginalized. The system has moved against two of Rafsanjanis children daughter Faezeh and son Mehdi both of whom have served time in jail this past year for their activities in support ofMousavi and Karroubi,who remain under house arrest.
In 2009, Mousavi experienced a sudden swell of popular backing as Iranians turned against the poor record of Ahmadinejad. Under the principle of gravitating toward the lesser of two evils, the electorate might be more tempted by Rafsanjani than by any of the largely lackluster conservatives also vying for the post. (Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Ahmadinejads preferred candidate, also registered to run but is likely to be barred by the Guardian Council.) At 78, however, Rafsanjani may be too old for a last hurrah. And while Rafsanjani may have more appeal than nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and even Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, there remains the question of whether Iranians will vote in large numbers after the terrible letdown of 2009.
There is also the question of what any Iranian president can do in the face of crushing economic sanctions and a stalemate with the West over the nuclear program. While a new president may improve Irans image and change the tone of discourse with the outside world, the supreme leader has the final say on domestic and foreign policies. Should Rafsanjani somehow prevail, it is possible that the two remaining stalwarts of the 1979 revolution could work together to salvage the system and resolve Irans endemic quarrel with the United States. Iranian politics can be surprising, but at this point, that ending seems like something that only Hollywood could imagine.
By Al-Monitor
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