No holds barred in Iranian poll

Businessday.co.za:

Iran’s presidential race is turning nasty, with frontrunner Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his family increasingly targets for attacks over money and morality.

Rafsanjani, president from 1989 to 1997, opened his campaign for the June 17 election vowing to save Iran from “extremists”. This is a clear shot at the hardliners whom he is hoping to trounce.

But they are fighting back, clearly angered at Rafsanjani’s claim to be the only credible figure on offer to the electorate. READ MORE

One hardline MP, Elias Naderan, has openly accused one of Rafsanjani’s sons, Mehdi Hashemi, of helping to fund the campaign by skimming cash from an oil ministry branch that deals with economising fuel.

Mehdi Hashemi has denied the allegation, but the accusations keep coming.
The right-wing press have latched onto the story, and are also pointing at another of Rafsanjani’s sons, Mohsen Hashemi, who they claim was fired from heading the Tehran Metro organisation.

A close aide of Rafsanjani said: “Millions of Video CDs have also been pressed. They are against Rafsanjani and his children. They are accusing them of not respecting Islamic values and profiting from their positions.”

The attacks come as Rafsanjani, seen as a pragmatic conservative in favour of improved ties with the west and economic liberalisation, has been placed by informal opinion polls as a clear frontrunner in the election race.

Sniping at Rafsanjani over his alleged fortune is nothing new in Iran, but blatant public attacks against him and his family are.

Also the target of hardliners is his feminist daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, who recently found herself under attack from the ultra-conservative Ya Lessarat newspaper, which is an organ of the Ansar Hezbollah militia.

She is said to be writing a book titled 100 Iranian Heroines. The paper says it includes Ashraf Pahlavi, sister of the late shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was ousted in 1979.

Faezeh Hashemi has been at odds with hardliners before. Feminist articles, in the magazine she set up, Zan (Woman), irked them.

She has since quit the political scene, and is now living and studying in Britain.

Rafsanjani was the target of virulent attacks from the reformist camp, the other side of Iran’s political spectrum, in 2000, when confident moderates succeeded in pushing him out of parliament.

Sources close to Rafsanjani, say he put off announcing his candidacy to the last moment to limit potential for such attacks.

But a new journal, The Sky of Friendship, was quick off the mark. In its first issue it describes him as the “tribune for Iranian millionaires”.