Word: hashemi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...issue at hand was the succession to the country's aging leader, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is now 86 and reportedly in perilous health. Indeed, there is ample evidence that fervently anti-U.S. radicals like Mousavi are sharply at odds with pragmatists like Parliamentary Speaker Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, 52, over the leadership of the Iranian revolution in the post-Khomeini...
...struggle for succession in Iran first surfaced when the U.S. arms-for- hostages scandal was revealed last November. It reached a peak last month during an extraordinary televised confession by Mehdi Hashemi, a leading radical politician and a close associate of the Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, 64, Khomeini's officially designated successor. Hashemi and a number of henchmen were arrested on charges of murder, kidnaping and sedition. According to reports from Tehran, the state's evidence includes such exotic weapons as vials of cyanide, booby-trapped shoes, exploding ink pens and remote-control model airplanes equipped with explosives. In early...
...While Hashemi, former chief of the Tehran bureau responsible for exporting Islamic-style revolution, is an expendable power broker, the case against him has wider political significance. The Iranscam affair became public knowledge after radical supporters of Hashemi reportedly leaked the story of Iran's covert diplomatic and military dealings with the U.S. to ash-Shiraa, the Lebanese magazine that Ronald Reagan subsequently described as "that rag in Beirut." Moreover, Khomeini's public support for punishing Hashemi has been interpreted by some observers as evidence that the radicals in the Iranian leadership are losing ground to the pragmatists...
Even so, Khomeini has gone to considerable lengths to avoid giving the impression that he has withdrawn his support of Montazeri as his handpicked successor. He has, for example, permitted Montazeri to characterize Hashemi as a sort of loose cannon, an Iranian-style Oliver North who frequently acted on his own. Montazeri has denied any complicity in Hashemi's illegal activities and has pressed for a full investigation at "whatever cost." In his televised confession, Hashemi admitted that he had "abused the confidence" of Montazeri...
...same folks who called us "The Great Satan" are now calling us liars. Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Speaker of Iran's parliament, has accused the U.S. government of lying and making up "new lies to whitewash the scandal facing them." And, sadly enough, I think he is probably right...