The humiliation of Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, the head of the Expediency Council and former President of the mullahs’ regime, during a speech in the holy city of Qom on June 3 once again underscored the depth of internal crisis the ruling theocracy in Iran is facing.
Chants of “down with Rafsanjani†by those attending his speech which was being aired live on state-run television sounded the bells for a dictatorship on its deathbed.
Mullah Rafsanjani’s face at the event was quite a sight. With all the “capacity†of impudence and obscenity he holds for himself, he had lost control and it seemed as if he did not expect to be isolated by those who used to call him the “foundation of the regime†and the “man of war†before the fall of the mullahs’ regime.
Who is Rafsanjani? He was the man who at the time of Iran-Iraq war, Khomeini – the founder of Islamic Republic – assigned to be the commander in chief of all Iranian military forces, while the current Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, was president. The post clearly put him at an advantage and made him the number one man in the Islamic Republic at the time.
The day after the death of Khomeini, Rafsanjani approved Ali Khamenei – whose credentials in the ranks of clergy are still below many others after all these years – the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic over night.
But now, on the anniversary of Khomeini’s death, he has run into such bad fortune under the rule of Khamenei that he is being made fun of in gatherings.
Some observers inside the ruling circles see the outcome of this speech as a pretext to force Rafsanjani out of public life and to take even the limited powers he still holds in the ruling of the country away from him.
But the situation is that this event is a proof of the approaching end of the regime he helped built and shows the crisis situation the mullahs’ regime as a whole is in.
A historic satire is in the making. Rafsanjani, who was the main man responsible for Ali Khamenei becoming Iran’s Supreme Leader, now after sixteen years, is being humiliated, dishonored and ousted by the same Supreme Leader whom he helped to power.
The situation of Rafsanjani, once the number one powerful man in Iran’s theocratic regime, is a sign and a clear reflection of the rapid descent of an egocentric fascist theocracy that once dreamed of becoming the Islamic Empire in the twenty-first century.
