CAIRO: One of Iran’s most powerful men may be playing a key role behind closed doors in the country’s escalating postelection crisis.

Former President and influential religious figure Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has made no public comment since Iran erupted into confrontation between supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and reformists who claim he stole re-election through fraud.

Iranian TV said yesterday that authorities have arrested Rafsanjani’s eldest daughter, the clearest sign to date that the seasoned politician may be at odds with the rest of the ruling establishment.

The television said Faezeh Hashemi and four other family members it did not identify were arrested late Saturday for taking part in unauthorized protest rallies. It gave no other details, but Rafsanjani’s daughter, a former lawmaker, was shown on state TV last week speaking to hundreds of opposition supporters.

And Rafsanjani, who has made no secret of his distaste for Ahmadinejad, was conspicuously absent from an address by the country’s supreme leader calling for national unity and siding with the president.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised Rafsanjani, 75, on Friday as one of the revolution’s architects and an effective political figure for many years, but he acknowledged that the two have “many differences of opinion.” “Of course, the president’s ideas are closer to mine,” Khamenei said, warning opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters to halt protests or face the consequences.

While his true views, and even his whereabouts, remain unclear, any support for the opposition would place Rafsanjani in direct conflict with many of the most powerful figures in Iran’s highest echelons of power.

The regime’s militant wing, with Ahmadinejad its most visible face, takes a hard-line position on relations with Washington and is determined to push forward with the nuclear program regardless of the consequences, experts say.

A camp of pragmatic politicians led by Rafsanjani, while loyal to the revolution’s principles, wants to build better ties with the West and a more friendly image of Iran.

“What is clear is that the leadership is far more polarized and splintered than has been clear in the past,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Friday’s comments showed the country’s ultimate authority is firmly behind Ahmadinejad, who has publicly accused Rafsanjani and members of his family of corruption. Experts said that could mean Rafsanjani’s power is waning.

“Now that the leader has made clear he was supportive of Ahmadinejad and sharing the same vision of the future of the Islamic Republic, it can be taken as a major defeat for Rafsanjani and for the political options he promotes,” said Frederic Tellier, an Iran expert in the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

Rafsanjani was president between 1989 and 1997, but failed to win a third term when in 2005, losing to Ahmadinejad in a runoff. He was a close follower of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of Iran’s revolution. He now heads the Expediency Council, a body that arbitrates disputes between Parliament and the unelected Guardian Council, which can block legislation.

He also is the head of the powerful Assembly of Experts, which comprises senior scholars who can elect and dismiss the country’s supreme leader.