Fatemeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, daughter of Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said her father will run in the forthcoming presidential elections.
“My father will register for next month’s presidential election but he will register in the last days of the registration process,” she is quoted as saying by a source close to Hashemi’s family.
The source spoke to the Iran’sView on condition of anonymity.
Speculations over whether Hashemi Rafsanjani, currently chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran will run for the presidency is one of the main topics in the reformist camp.
Rafsanjani never said he would not run for the presidency but he also did not affirm it either. In a meeting with a reformist journalist two weeks ago he only said ‘I haven’t said that I will not run [for the presidency]!’
The press interpreted this stance as Hashemi is willing to try his chance for a second time to be Iran’s President. Last time, he lost the race to his rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who won 62 percent of the vote in the run-offf poll against Akbar Hashemi Rafsnjani.
Speculations over Hashemi’s run for the upcoming election became complicated when some Iranian opposition news sites reported a meeting of Rafsanjani with a former state governors from the reformist and moderate camps in which the former Iranian president said he did not foresee a situation in which he and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei could work together.
Also Former intelligence minster of Iran, Ali Younesi said on May 7 that in a meeting with Rafsanjani on Monday (May 6), former president insisted that he would not run for president.
Earlier on May 5, Hashemi told a group of university students in Tehran on May 5 that he is assessing the situation before making up his mind to enter the country’s upcoming presidential election.
Rafsanjani also said that he needs to consult the Supreme Leader before making a decision in this regard.
“I will not enter the race without the Leader’s blessing because if Ayatollah Khamenei does not agree with my candidacy, “the result will be counterproductive,” Hashemi said.
Political analysts believe that Hashemi is weighing the situation to run for president as he doesn’t want to repeat the unpleasant experiences he had of losing in the two last elections of parliamentary and presidential elecctions in the last decade.
