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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Where has ex-Iran president Rafsanjani vanished to? |
| 2009-06-28 |
| If anyone can serve as the ultimate barometer of the political mood in Iran, and knows what to say without looking like someone who has stepped out of line, it is Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, says Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA intelligence analyst and Iran researcher at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute in his book "The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America" (Random House, 2004). During the past month Rafsanjani has stepped strikingly "out of line." Three days before the elections he made public a letter he sent to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that included a sharp complaint against him. "The supreme leader has seen fit to remain silent in the face of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's accusations against me," wrote Rafsanjani. He was referring to Ahmadinejad's remarks during a televised debate with rival presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, in which Ahmadinejad accused Rafsanjani of having made millionaires of members of his family since the Islamic revolution in 1979, and accused Mousavi of being supported by "corrupt politicians like Rafsanjani." A week later, in his Friday sermon, Khamenei attacked Ahmadinejad for his remarks against Rafsanjani and, very angrily, "suggested" that anyone who has complaints about Rafsanjani should submit them to a court and not make false accusations in public. However, he immediately added that even though he has known Rafsanjani for over 50 years, Ahmadinejad is closer to his heart. |
| Posted by:Steve White |