‘Don’t lose hope,’ Rafsanjani urges supporters after being barred from elections

This article was last updated on May 25, 2022

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Amid calls for overturn of Guardian Council decision

The daughter of Imam Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Republic, has criticised a recent decision by the hardline Guardian Council to bar former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from running in the upcoming presidential elections on June 14th.

During a meeting with his campaign staff on Wednesday, Rafsanjani urged his supporters not to lose hope. The veteran politician said the foreign threats against Iran were “serious.”

In a letter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Zahra Mostafavi issued a “sisterly” warning that the Council’s decision to disqualify the 79-year-old would soon lead to a deepening of the rifts between the two men.

On Tuesday, Iran’s powerful electoral watchdog, the Guardian Council, barred Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pillar of the revolution and currently the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, from standing in the June vote.

Mostafavi urged Khamenei to intervene in order to overturn the Council’s move and to prevent the country from veering towards “dictatorship”. She also claimed that her father had endorsed the two men equally.

“The same day I heard Imam [Khomeini’s] approval of Your Eminence’s leadership … I also heard his endorsement of brother Hashemi [Rafsanjani’s] credentials, because the Imam mentioned his name after your name,” Mostafavi wrote. “Unfortunately, today, as I see how the Guardian Council has found him unfit to run in the presidential election, I would like to issue a sisterly warning that this move [Rafsanjani’s disqualification] merely means a further widening of the gap between two of the Imam’s comrades and a disregard for the enthusiasm and eagerness that people on the streets had [recently] developed towards the [political] system and elections.”

She went on to add: “I do not claim that, today, Mr Hashemi [Rafsanjani] is the same person he was yesterday … but your gradual separation from one another has brought about the greatest harm to the revolution and the system. As the Imam always said, ‘these two are good until they are together.’”

In his letter to Khamenei, Ali Motahari, son of the most prominent ideologue of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Morteza Motahari, called on the Leader to issue a decree overturning the Guardian Council’s decision concerning Rafsanjani’s candidacy.

In 2005, when reformist candidate Mostafa Moin was initially rejected by the Guardian Council, Khamenei overturned the supervisory body’s decision, which finally led to Moin’s reinstatement.

Motahari, who is also a member of parliament and a key figure in Rafsanjani’s campaign, continued, “I have a strong hunch that if Imam Khomeini had been alive [today] and had stood as a candidate in the elections, he would have been disqualified, for he was also critical at times.”

In an interview with the semi-official Mehr news agency, the conservative lawmaker mentioned that Rafsanjani’s old age and his alleged role in the 2009 unrests were the reasons for the Guardian Council’s decision.

“Both reasons are invalid,” he said. “In order to assess Mr Hashemi [Rafsanjani’s] physical well-being, I would suggest a 100-metre dash between him [Rafsanjani] and [presidential candidate] Mr Jalili and a wrestling match between him and [other presidential hopeful] Mr Haddad [Adel].”

Saeed Jalili, currently Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, lost half his right leg while defending the country during Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq. He is believed to be Khamenei’s favourite candidate to win the election.

Imam Khomeini’s grandson, Hassan Khomeini, said that Rafsanjani’s removal from the presidential race was “unimaginable.” In a letter to Rafsanjani on Wednesday, he said that in recent days, he was amazed by the sheer support for Rafsanjani amongst “more than 90%” of people visiting his grandfather’s tomb.

Following news of Rafsanjani’s disqualification, prominent cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Sadegh Haeri Shirazi, a member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, also wrote a letter to the Supreme Leader slamming the move.

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