Blow to Iran opposition

HASHEMI Rafsanjani had no choice. Facing a powerful cleric who was certain to win, the former Iranian president rightly chose not to seek a second term as chief of the Assembly of Experts. The new chairman of the assembly, Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani, has the backing of spiritual leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even though Mr Rafsanjani still remains a member of the assembly, the loss of chieftaincy is a blow to his prestige and to the opposition seeking to maintain its momentum after the 2009 presidential election. Mr Rafsanjani also heads the Council of Expediency, but his term expires next year, and that could well mean his exit from two constitutional institutions in a system that has multiple centres of power. Mr Rafsanjani is a centrist who consistently opposed Mr Ahmadinejad`s hard-line conservative policies. However, the breach between the two widened in the 2009 presidential election when the former president made no secret of his sympathy for Mr Ahmadinejad`s rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. The presidential election, the opposition claimed, had been rigged, and this led to rioting.

Since then, the Rafsanjani family has been facing the state`s wrath. Faezeh, his daughter, was arrested last month but released, one of his sons quit his job with Tehran`s metro system because he found his working made impossible, and a warrant for arrest has been issued for another son now in Britain. Mr Mousavi and his supporters are branded `seditionists` by the conservative lobby, and that makes Mr Rafsanjani, one of Iran`s richest men, a `supporter` of sedition. The Assembly of Experts elects the spiritual leader and is supposed to guide him. But this is mere theory, for Mr Khamenei and Mr Ahmadinejad make a powerful combination, which has acquired added strength because of Ayatollah Kani`s unopposed election, giving a blow to the `seditionists`.

Source:

http://www.dawn.com/2011/03/12/blow-to-iran-opposition.html