Hashemi Rafsanjani biography

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(born 1934, Rafsanjn, Iran) Iranian cleric and politician, who was president of Iran from 1989 to 1997.

Rafsanjani was the son of a prosperous farmer in the town of Rafsanjn, in the Kermn region of Iran. He moved to the Shite holy city of Qom in 1948 to pursue his religious studies, and in 1958 he became a disciple of Ruhollah Khomeini. Rafsanjani became a hojatoleslm (from the Arabic ujjat al-Islm: “proof of Islam”), the second highest Shite Muslim rank (after that of ayatollah). Like Khomeini, he opposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's modernization program, and when Khomeini was exiled from Iran in 1962, Rafsanjani became his chief fund-raiser inside the country. He spent the years 1975–78 in jail in Iran on charges of links with left-wing terrorists.

With the shah's overthrow and Khomeini's return to Iran in 1979, Rafsanjani became one of Khomeini's chief lieutenants. He helped found the Islamic Republican Party, served on the Revolutionary Council, and was acting interior minister during the early years of the revolution. He was also elected to the Majles (Islamic Consultative Assembly) in 1980, and he became that body's speaker the same year. As the dominant voice in the Majles for the next nine years, Rafsanjani gradually emerged as the second most powerful figure in Iran's government. He was intimately involved in Iran's prosecution of the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), and he helped persuade Khomeini to agree to the cease-fire of August 1988 that effectively ended the war.

After Khomeini's death in June 1989, Rafsanjani was instrumental in securing the position of Pres. Ali Khamenei—who was hastily elevated from the less lofty position of hojatoleslm to the rank of ayatollah—as Khomeini's successor as supreme leader. Rafsanjani himself was elected Iran's president by an overwhelming margin shortly thereafter. He quickly garnered increased powers for a previously weak executive office, and he showed considerable political skill in promoting his pragmatic policies in the face of resistance from Islamic hard-liners. Rafsanjani favoured reducing Iran's international isolation and renewing its ties with Europe as part of a strategy to use foreign investment and free enterprise to revive the country's war-torn economy. Domestically, he implemented family-planning practices, in effect reversing previous policies encouraging population growth. Although human rights abuses and the suppression of dissent continued, there was a degree of cultural openness under Rafsanjani, and a certain level of criticism was tolerated. Nevertheless, demonstrations and protests against the government in the early 1990s were harshly