Rafsanjani’s Memoirs Refuted

Roozonline - A documentary labeled “I am Rouhani” and produced by an Iranian company Shafaq Media depicts the life of President Hassan Rouhani continues to generate controversy in the country. Iran’s judiciary announced this week that it was stepping in to investigate it and hardline principlists (Osoolgarayan) took postures against those who criticized it.

Even though this documentary has been shown at various Iranian universities since January, it has become a national issue more recently.

The head of Iran’s parliament Ali Larijani on Saturday said that the issues raised in the movie were “not true” because he is portrayed to have been present at a meeting in Tehran in 1987 with US National Security advisor Robert McFarlane. In reality, he had nothing to do with the event but those who did have all been identified.” Larijani said that those who had made the DVD were lying even to history.

As criticism over the documentary has been mounting, the spokesperson of Iran’s judiciary Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejhei announced in his weekly news conference, “If untrue issues are disseminated publicly, then the prosecutor will get involved in the case. The prosecutor will get involved if insults are made in the movie as well. Two narratives have been made about the documentary and I do not know which one is correct. One version is that there are presentations in the DVD that are not exactly untrue while there are those who claim that parts of the movie are not true. Regardless of this, Tehran’s prosecutor will most certainly investigate.”

Earlier, Rouhani’s advisor Hesamedin Ashena had said that the producers of the documentary would have to be ready to respond to questions about their work in the public court of opinion.

The documentary contains parts that have become controversial as different groups have questioned their factuality. One of them relates to McFarlane’s trip to Iran and the other relates to a letter in which 99 Majlis representatives objected to the reappointment of Mir-Hossein Mousavi as Prime Minister while the country’s then leader ayatollah Khomeini had stressed on his reappointment. Rouhani is presented in this movie to be among the 99 protesters.

ISNA recently quoted an informed source at the president’s office to have said that “some parts of the documentary are inaccurate. Another issue is that wrong sources have been referenced in the film. Last year these issues were communicated to the producers and they were requested to take corrective action, something that was not done.”

Masoumeh Nabavi, the director of the documentary told Mehr news agency that they had used Rouhani’s own memoirs and talked to those associated with him. For events prior to the revolution, his own memoir was very rich while for post revolution events the auto biography of Hashemi Rafsanjani was helpful. Most of the sensitive sections came from this latter source. For more recent events and those relating to the nuclear issue, we had plenty of sources and we had easy access to information even though we stressed to use sources to Mr. Rouhani himself.”

Responding to the criticism over the movie, Shafaq Media wrote that regarding the McFarlane issue despite the American version of events where Dr Rouhani’s role had been stressed, Mr. Rafsanjani’s book and the statements made by Zarif and Moussavian were used as the main sources for the event.”

Principlists Object to the Critics

Hardline principlists have objected to the critics of the documentary and call their remarks inaccurate. Mehrdad Bazrpash, a close associate of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a member of parliament, said, “If some people have criticism regarding the move, then they need to present it in a proper and suitable media atmosphere. A media frenzy has been created over this four months after the documentary was released and shown. So many documentaries are made against the regime without any objections from these gentlemen.

Raja news, which is also closely associated with the principlists, accused government media of orchestrating the criticism. Some principlists at the same time interpret some of the criticism of the documentary to be in their interest. Pars website, for example, wrote, “It is Rafsanjani’s auto-biography that is labeled to be a lie by Larijani.”

Javan newspaper affiliated to the political office of the Revolutionary Guards rejected some of the narratives of the documentary and wrote, “Rafsanjani’s memoirs have been openly questioned by his relatives and supporters and even rejected regarding the claim that Rouhani was aware of the McFarlane trip to Iran.”

Reformist Etemad newspaper wrote a piece on the producers of the documentary in which it said, “Shafaq Media is the producer while Safir is the distributor of the documentary. The producer had made an earlier destructive documentary on Rafsanjani, among others which are released once in a while and which receive the clapping of hardliners.”

Only the first part of a three part series of “I am Rouhani” has been released till now. All of the movies produced by Shafaq are critical of Rouhani’s administration, and they include titles such as “Filtering the Negotiations,” “When Zarif is Asleep,” and “The Illiterate do not Talk.” Safir had announced a while ago that two universities, Alameh Tabatabai and Amir Kabir had not allowed the documentary to be shown on its campuses.