Rafsanjani seeks return to Iran’s political limelight

AFP via Breitbart ^ | 5/11/2013 4:47:15 PM

[Olog-hai]

Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who registered on Saturday for next month’s presidential election, is disliked among regime hardliners for criticizing the crackdown that followed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election in 2009.

This pragmatic moderate, who in 2011 lost the post of head of the Assembly of Experts that supervises the activities of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has never hidden his intense opposition to Ahmadinejad who beat him in the 2005 presidential election. …

Rafsanjani—president from 1989 to 1997—is considered to favor rapprochement with the West.

He played an important role in the election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami, who succeeded him to the presidency (1997-2005). …

[Olog-hai]

Three lies in a row out of AFP. Rafsanjani is not a moderate—he is as radical as his rival Ahmadinejad. He never favored rapprochement with the West either. And Khatami is no “reformist”.

[InterceptPoint]

I remember this guy.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Gotta be 100.

[SunkenCiv]

The presidency was stripped of important powers during the term in office of Ahmednutjob’s predecessor/Rafsanjani’s successor. Thanks Olog-hai.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3014350/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3015242/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2271237/posts