Iranians must heed leader's guidelines: Rafsanjani
Reuters / Hossein Jaseb & Hashem Kalantari
23-Aug-2009 (2 comments)

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has urged people to follow Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's guidelines, five weeks after he challenged the authority of Iran's most powerful figure.

Rafsanjani, who last month defied a call by hardline clerics to back Iran's disputed presidential election result, also called for action to foster unity, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The conciliatory statement appeared to be in contrast to a hard-hitting sermon Rafsanjani delivered on July 17, when he declared the Islamic Republic in crisis and demanded an end to arrests of moderates following the election.

Shortly after that sermon, 50 members of the 86-seat Assembly of Experts, the body which appoints the supreme leader, called on Rafsanjani to show more support for Khamenei, who endorsed hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election in the June vote, which reformers say was rigged.

Rafsanjani, a rival of Ahmadinejad, backed moderate Mirhossein Mousavi in the poll.

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Shifteh Ansari

Too late

by Shifteh Ansari on Sun Aug 23, 2009 02:13 AM PDT

Even louder than saying "Ahmadinejad is not my president," Iranians have been saying "Khamenei is not my leader."  Nobody can save Khamenei from the image he has created in the Iranian mind now.  Not even Hashemi Rafsanjani.


Balatarin
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rosie is roxy is roshan

Hashemi plays it as it lays.

by rosie is roxy is roshan on Mon Aug 24, 2009 06:28 PM PDT

and lays it as he plays. What this movement needs right now is for its three main leaders (MKK) not to be indicted. It needs for less new arrests to take place, it means for kids spraypainting some wall green not to be tortured into making false confessions about being MKO. It needs individual, not mass trials, it needs the accused to be allowed to have lawyers. It needs the sentences to be minimized and the capital penalty to be aovided altogether. Websites, newspapers, law offices, will continue to be shut down and reopened, it needs the people involved to be subject to the most lenient conditions as possible as I mentioned above.

You are right. No one will ever trust Khamenei or the Velayat or the Basij or the Guards or Mahmood again of these Greens and their supporters. Better a living non-truster than a dead one. ESPECIALLY NOW. What earthly good would one more death do?  The important thing to do right now is to save people's asses. And who better to take on the job of public bullshitting requred to do it than Rafsanjani?

Hashemi NEVER WAS a moral pillar of the Movement, he never was its ideologue, or philospher, or cheerleader. He was ALWAYS its behind the scenes pragmatic support. So no one feels betrayed by Rafsanjan'is "betrayal" as they would if it were one of the leaders or a Montazeri or an Ebadi and so forth. Is he 'hurting anyone's feelings'? Taking away some young person's role model? What role model?

So he calls for reconciliation and to obey the leader while Karroubi goes around saying indctt the illegitimate bastards. The proof of the pudding of whether Rafsanjani really 'betrayed' the movement will be whether the Karroubis of the world get to keep on saying these things or whether you see their heads being paraded around on the top of a stick.

Give him time and see where it goes. He wheeled and dealed in private during the whole time of the major turmoil. His biggest public actions were NON-presence, not presence. He hasn't said all that much in substance so different from his Friday prayer sermon last month, one of the few times he said anything. Rafsanjani always knew in the short run this movement would fail. But he also knew that in the long run there's no turning back. He lost to Mahmood on grounds of corruption. He backed the Greens sleazily from the shadows. Now he comes out in public looking corrupt to...do what?

Until we see how many asses are spared (or what he does if they're NOT), for me the jury is still out on Hashemi.


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