TOP CLERIC MAY BE PLAYING ROLE IN IRAN UNREST

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
22.06.2009 13:54 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ One of Iran’s most powerful men may be playing a
key role behind closed doors in the country’s escalating post-election
crisis.

Former president and influential cleric Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani
has made no public comment since Iran erupted into confrontation
between backers of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and
reformists who claim he stole re-election through fraud.

But Iranian TV has shown pictures of Rafsanjani’s daughter,
Faezeh Hashemi, speaking to hundreds of opposition supporters. And
Rafsanjani, who has made no secret of his distaste for Ahmadinejad,
was conspicuously absent from an address by the country’s supreme
leader calling for national unity and siding with the president.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised Rafsanjani, 75,
on Friday as one of the revolution’s architects and an effective
political figure for many years, but he acknowledged that the two have
"many differences of opinion."

"Of course, the president’s ideas are closer to mine," Khamenei said,
warning opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters
to halt protests or face the consequences.

Demonstrators clashed with security forces in Tehran on Saturday
despite the ultimatum in the most widespread violence of the
crisis. There were unconfirmed reports of violence in other Iranian
cities.

While his true views, and even his whereabouts, remain unclear, any
support for the opposition would place Rafsanjani in direct conflict
with many of the most powerful clerics in Iran’s highest echelons
of power.

Rafsanjani was president between 1989 and 1997, but failed to win a
third term when in 2005, losing to Ahmadinejad in a runoff. He was
a close follower of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father
of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. He now heads the Expediency Council,
a body that arbitrates disputes between parliament and the unelected
Guardian Council, which can block legislation.

He also is the head of the powerful Assembly of Experts, which
comprises senior clerics who can elect and dismiss the country’s
supreme leader, Associated Press reported.