In a video interview that spread quickly via the interview last night, ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani says that those who are against the republican nature of Iran’s state have become stronger. “Imam Khomeini had a very specific idea for our future. We had to give power to the people as soon as possible. People should think for themselves, make the decisions themselves and apply the outcome themselves. That is the real ethos of Islam and that is what is these days called ‘the rule of people by people’.”
According to Rafsanjani, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been facing major threats from its very beginning. First, the secular elements and second, the reactionary elements. The secular elements have been challenging the Islamic nature of the state in the early years of the Revolution, but they are now weakened. The reactionary group who is against the democratic-republican nature of the state is much stronger these days and forms a more important threat, according to Rafsanjani.
About the Green Movement protesters, he said: “The majority of the critical mass that came to the streets are reformists. They seek reform within the constitutional context of the Islamic Republic. They are loyal to this state. They want reform but are not challenging the basis and essence of our state.”
Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani Rafsanjani served as President of Iran from 1989 to 1997. Currently he holds the position of Chairman of the Assembly of Experts and Chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran. For two decades – since the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 – he has been the most influential politician in Iran next to Supreme Leader ayatollah Khamenei. Rafsanjani, politically a pragmatist, is considered by President Ahmadinejad and the neo-fundamentalist fraction in Iran as the most important rival and the patron of the Green Movement.