Iran’s ex-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a dominant figure in the country’s politics since the 1980s, has died at the age of 82, media say.<\/p>\n
Mr Rafsanjani had suffered a heart attack, the reports said.<\/p>\n
He served as president from 1989 to 1997 but lost to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he ran again in 2005.<\/p>\n
Although Mr Rafsanjani was part of the religious establishment, he was regarded as a “pragmatic conservative” open to improving ties to the West.<\/p>\n
His final role was head of the Expediency Council, which tries to resolve disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council.<\/p>\n
It was the 12-member council, a dominant force in Iran that interprets the constitution, that had disqualified Mr Rafsanjani after he entered the race for the 2013 presidential election.<\/p>\n
After his defeat in 2005, Mr Rafsanjani became openly critical of the president.<\/p>\n
In 2009, he sided with reformers who disputed that year’s elections, although the hardline Mr Ahmadinejad won a second term.<\/p>\n
Mr Rafsanjani was among those calling for the release of political prisoners and greater political freedoms for parties prepared to work within the constitution.<\/p>\n
The state-run Irinn network announced on Sunday that Mr Rafsanjani had “passed away after a lifetime of fighting and constant efforts in line with fulfilling the goals of Islam and the revolution”.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran’s ex-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a dominant figure in the country’s politics since the 1980s, has died at the age of 82, media say. Mr Rafsanjani had suffered a heart attack, the reports said. He served as president from 1989 to 1997 but lost to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he ran again in 2005. Although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}