.@StateDept sends condolences to family of former #Iranian President Rafsanjani; calls him a “prominent figure” in post-revolution #Iran.
— Jay Solomon (@WSJSolomon) January 8, 2017
Condolences for the Man Who Called for the Killing of Americans
A central player in the Islamic Revolution, the former Iranian president was alleged to be behind numerous terror attacks. He openly called for the killing of Americans and other Westerners.
Shortly after becoming president in 1989, he suggested that Palestinians should kill Westerners to retaliate for Israeli actions in the alleged occupied territories.
“It is not hard to kill Americans or Frenchmen,” he said.
Ayatollah Rafsanjani once said, ”The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything, however it would only harm the Islamic world.”
“It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality,” He continued wistfully.
Rafsanjani was a Holocaust denier. “For instance, it is said that six million Jews died. Later accounts reveal that although people died, many Jews were in hiding during those days,” he claimed, ‘the dead’ are actually still living.”
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The Holocaust, he believed, empowered Israel.
He was cited by prosecutors in Argentina for links to the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed dozens, and by prosecutors in Germany for ties to the killing of Iranian dissidents in Europe.
During the Iran–Iraq War Rafsanjani was the de facto commander-in-chief of the Iranian military. After the Iranian Revolution, he helped form the Revolutionary Guards. His presidency followed and lasted until 1997.
The Ayatollah Rafsanjani supported free market and free speech but when confronted with it, he destroyed those who would exercise it in a way that displeased him.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and President Hassan Rohani, called on the Houthis to launch an all-out attack on oil fields, tankers, and industrial facilities in Saudi Arabia, as well as to operate deep inside Saudi territory and conduct retaliatory strikes against Saudi interests in the Strait of Bab Al-Mandeb, the Red Sea, and even the Strait of Hormuz.
Rafsanjani was also a heavyweight behind Iran’s nuclear program, including the push for its weaponization. He was a force behind Obama’s phony nuclear deal.
Nicknamed “The Shark” both for his smooth, hairless cheeks (reflecting his Mongol ancestry) and the killer political instincts, Rafsanjani was also nefarious for purging political opponents and intellectuals.
Most of the media is today referring to him as a pragmatist, including the Wall Street Journal. The so-called “pragmatist” was the architect of the theocracy’s machinery of repression and regional ambitions. He enshrined terrorism as an instrument of Iranian statecraft.
Despite his desire to push for a free market, his authoritarian tendencies precluded empowering the private sector as he insisted on a strong state dictating the creation of a modern industrial economy. His crony-rich etatism led to a bloated bureaucracy, too much foreign borrowing, and a debt crisis.
Corruption was endemic during his tenure as president.
As an autocrat, he never seriously considered reform. Claims of wanting reform camouflaged his militancy.
During his presidency, the press was severely censored, oppositionists were regularly jailed, and dissidents at home and abroad were assassinated. The most feared intelligence minister since the founding of the Islamic republic, Ali Fallahian, was Rafsanjani’s man.
Rafsanjani would at times mimic reformist slogans and hold round-tables with intellectuals, but Iran’s terrorism apparatus remained very much intact.
Rafsanjani’s published daily journals, which cover his presidency, reveal tantalizing evidence of cooperation with North Korea on ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. They also reveal Rafsanjani’s glee in outfoxing U.S. naval surveillance.
Iranian reformists consider Rafsanjani and Rouhani evil incarnate.
