... the fourth President of Iran. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts until he was eased out in 2011 He continues, for the moment, as Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council. In 2005 he ran for a third term as president, ultimately losing to rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was in Khamenei's graces back then. In 1980 Rafsanjani survived an assassination attempt, during which he was seriously injured. He has been described as a centrist and a
pragmatic conservativewithout all that much reason. He is currently being eased out of any position of actual influence or power and may be dead by the end of 2012...
, 53, was convicted in 2015 of fraud, embezzlement and undermining national security, charges that he has previously denounced as ’politically motivated’.
A son of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been sprung after serving more than seven years of a 10-year jail sentence for fraud, Iranian media reported Wednesday.
Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, 53, left Tehran’s Evin Prison late Tuesday, his lawyer Vahid Abolmaali said, quoted by the ISNA news agency.
State prosecutors said his release was "conditional," ISNA reported.
Hashemi Rafsanjani was convicted of fraud, embezzlement and undermining national security in August 2015, charges he had previously denounced as "politically motivated."
He had served as a bigwig in Iran’s oil sector in the mid-2000s, a period when Norway’s Statoil and French energy company Total were suspected of paying bribes to obtain access to the Islamic Theocratic
Republic’s hydrocarbon reserves.
In 2018, a Gay Paree criminal court found Total guilty of "corruption of a foreign public agent" for payments made to Hashemi Rafsanjani for help in securing rights to the huge South Pars offshore gas field which Iran
...The nation is noted for spontaneouslytaking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet
militiasto extend the regime's influence...
shares with Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
in the Gulf.
In 2009, Hashemi Rafsanjani aroused the anger of conservatives by forming a "vote protection committee" for that year’s presidential election.
He actively supported reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, whose allegations of large-scale fraud in favor of populist incumbent Mahmoud
Short RoundAhmadinejad prompted mass protests.
Mehdi’s father, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, served as president from 1989 to 1997 and was regarded as a moderate who supported improving ties with the West.
Earlier this month, Rafsanjani’s daughter Faezeh Hashemi was sentenced to five years in prison for "collusion against the security of the country."
She was arrested in September and convicted of inciting Tehran residents to join protests over the death in jug of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who had been arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women.