When Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani of Iran passed away recently, it was the loss of another of the central revolutionaries responsible for the modern Islamic Republic of Iran. And it’s also precipitated another struggle between the Conservatives and the Reformists, as Arash Karami reports in AL Monitor:
The reframing by conservatives undoubtedly is intentional. It is an effort to bring Rafsanjani’s legacy into the fold, to once again rebrand him as a pillar of the state, and most importantly, one in the vision of Iran’s conservatives. Rather than the untouchable statesmen who pushed the envelope on sensitive political topics, conservatives will rebrand him as a revolutionary who got in line behind the supreme leader. This reframing will rob Reformists of the opportunity of using Rafsanjani’s numerous public statements to push their political agendas. It will also seek to demand that Reformists and moderates get in line behind both Khamenei and the conservatives who claim to speak on the supreme leader’s behalf. Reformist and moderate media, who often are at the mercy of conservative forces in the security establishment and the judiciary, will have a difficult time pushing back against this narrative. Rather than using Rafsanjani’s political legacy to their advantage, they are likely to waste considerable resources on the defensive, pushing back against the legacy presented by conservatives.
When one has too much reverence for the past, then that’s where the struggle will take place. Rather than a commitment to the truth, to studying his writings and his actions, those who are committed to ideological positions will try to do whatever is necessary to take a hero and turn him into something that he may not have been. Is this a problem?
Well, yes. The disregard for the truth, while perhaps relatively harmless in this particular instance, can result in serious mistakes when dealing with realities. An extreme example might be an ideological position regarding how nuclear reactions work – an ideological disconnect with reality could lead to disaster for the person handling the nuclear material.
And it may not be entirely harmless in this case. If the Conservatives overplay their hand, they risk losing the trust of the general populace. Now, perhaps in Iran this does not matter – perhaps the instinct to tribalism is so strong that it doesn’t matter a great deal, although I have to think that it does, given how the Iranian Presidency has swung between Conservatives and Reformists over the decades. And if it does matter, and the Conservatives are not exceedingly tidy in how they attempt to retell Rafsanjani’s story, it could lead the Iranian citizen to question their trustworthiness.
Religious rectitude may be enough for some of a naive disposition, but I doubt that many Iranians are naive.
