Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
August 25, 1934 – January 8, 2017
Iranian Shia cleric and politician who was speaker of parliament through the 1980s and President of Iran from 1989 to 1997.
Biography
Born Ali Akbar Hashemi Bahramani in 1934, he left home at fourteen to study theology in Qom, where he came under the influence of Ruhollah Khomeini. He opposed the Shah's White Revolution and adopted the name Rafsanjani, after his home region.
He was one of the founders of the Combatant Clergy Association and, after the 1979 revolution, sat on the central committee of the Islamic Republican Party. Elected to parliament in 1980, he served as its speaker until 1989. In the last year of the Iran–Iraq War he was made deputy commander-in-chief, and he pressed for Iran's acceptance of the UN ceasefire resolution that ended the war.
After Khomeini's death he helped bring about the choice of Ali Khamenei as supreme leader and was elected president in 1989, winning again in 1993. He favoured privatisation and market economics at home and a more moderate foreign policy, and from 1989 he also chaired the Expediency Discernment Council.
He lost the 2005 presidential run-off to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, headed the Assembly of Experts from 2007 to 2011, and was sidelined after backing the opposition in 2009; the Guardian Council disqualified him from the 2013 election. He died in Tehran in January 2017 after a heart attack.
Offices held
Affiliations
Education
- from Jan 1, 1948 Qom Seminary theology studies from age 14
- University of Isfahan
- University of Tehran
Party membership
- Jan 1, 1977 – Jan 1, 2009 Combatant Clergy Association one of the 28 founders; ceased activity in 2009
- Jan 1, 1979 – Jun 1, 1987 Islamic Republican Party central committee member
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