Khomeini's Daughter Asks Khamenei: Let Rafsanjani Run
Ayatollah Khomeini's daughter Zahra Mostafavi has written to the supreme leader to ask him to intervene after the Guardian Council disqualified Hashemi Rafsanjani for the presidential race.
One day after the Islamic Republic of Iran's Guardian Council disqualified Hashemi Rafsanjani as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, the daughter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini asked Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a letter to intervene and change the decision, in order to keep "the regime and the revolution" from harm.
In the letter published on the Jamaran site, Zahra Mostafavi Khomeini also stated that she heard her father say that in addition to Ali Khamenei, he had also approved the name of Hashemi Rafsanjani as Iran's next supreme leader. This is the first time a member of Khomeini's family has explicitly spoken of the founder of the Islamic Republic's positive opinion of Rafsanjani as a potential leader of Iran.
The Guardian Council, the body responsible for vetting the presidential candidates, is comprised of six jurists appointed by the supreme leader and six lawyers who are indirectly picked by the supreme leader. On Tuesday [May 21] the council approved eight presidential candidates but rejected Rafsanjani and Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's protégé and closest adviser.
Rafsanjani, at the time of Ayatollah Khomeini's death in 1989, said that he had heard Khomeini say that he wished Ali Khamenei to be the future leader of the Islamic Republic. Hashemi's words inside the Council of Experts, the body charged with selecting the supreme leader, became the basis on which Ali Khamenei was elected. For years, many critics have held Hashemi responsible for bringing Ali Khamenei to power and have frequently criticized him for it.
