17 Mar 2009
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch/Detail/(parameter)/?id=97795&lng=en
Iran: Rafsanjani Not Down, Not Out
Aliakbar Hashemi Rafsanjani campaigning in 2005.
A triumphal state visit to Iraq aimed at isolating the Iranian radicals and an important re-election boost Rafsanjani's position in the hierarchy, but the fight is not over, writes Kamal Nazer Yasin in Tehran for ISN Security Watch.
for ISN Security Watch
Former Iranian president Aliakbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is no ordinary politician. Few individuals match him in versatility and sheer willpower. A leader of the underground political organization before the revolution and the country's leading politician afterward; the commander of the armed forces during the war; an apparent anti-reformist during the Khatami years; a badly defeated front-runner in the 2005 presidential race; and now the hardliners' implacable foe; Rafsanjani's career has seen many ups and downs in his half century of political trajectory.
During the reform era, his popularity rating was among the lowest of any living individual in the country, but after the hardliners' victory in 2005 and his subsequent reconciliation with the reformists, Rafsanjani's popularity is on the rebound. Today, he is universally recognized as the most important clerical foe of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his many backers. On top of this, Rafsanjani is positioning himself as a leading religious modernizer.
"In 2005, most people thought he was finished," said a veteran Iranian journalist to ISN Security Watch. "He was 71 years old and had been turned by the radicals into a symbol of everything that had gone wrong with the system. No one expected him to return to the top again."
