The Myth of Rafsanjani

Former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, a so-called Iranian moderate and pragmatist, died Sunday at 82.

"For a picture of the cleric, who served as president of Iran from 1989 to 1997, read these excerpts from pieces over the years by WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor Reuel Marc Gerecht.


Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, … is in the West probably the most misunderstood cleric in the Islamic Republic. For the Europeans, and some in the Bush administration, Rafsanjani was the white-turbaned hope, the realpolitician-pragmatist who would save the West from a showdown over Iran's nuclear-weapons program. In reality, he is the true father of Iran's nuclear-bomb program, an overlord for the Iranian terrorism that struck Europe in the 1980s and '90s, and quite possibly one of the dark princes behind the domestic assassination campaign of Iranian liberals that began in the late 1990s. Concerning Israel, Rafsanjani has never given any indication that he differs with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group Rafsanjani has always supported: Israelis are best when dead."