TEARS always came easily to the lachrymose ayatollah. But those at a gathering on December 13th seemed more heartfelt than most. He was reading from his own biography of Amir Kabir, the Shah’s chief minister in the mid-19th century, when the blubbing began. Kabir had tried to open the Persian Empire up to the West, he wept, only to be frustrated by the hand of a hardline assassin. “Something suggested he was thinking of his own failed attempts at reform,” says one of those present.
With death approaching, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died on January 8th aged 82, may also have had an eye on posterity. Eulogists are already hailing a lifetime spent trying to open Iran and its Islamic revolution to the West. Israeli officials were among the first to label him a moderate. In the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, they sold him arms. In return, he obligingly diverted the proceeds with a nod from America’s Republican leaders to the Contras, Nicaragua’s anti-communist rebels. “If people believe we can live behind a closed door, they are mistaken. We are in need of friends and allies around the world,” he explained. He persuaded Ayatollah Khomeini to...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2jvEx4o
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