TEHRAN, 9 June 2005 — Iran will agree to renew dialogue with archfoe Washington if it releases Iranian assets frozen since the revolution, presidential frontrunner Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was quoted as saying yesterday. “As I have said before, a goodwill gesture on the part of the United States would be for them to unblock our assets,” the top Shiite cleric said in an interview with the hard-line Jomhuri Islami newspaper.
“If such a gesture was made, we could enter into negotiations. This has been my position and I still think the same way,” the 70-year-old Rafsanjani said. Iran and the United States cut off relations in 1980, a year after the revolution, and Iranian assets in the US were frozen. Rafsanjani has previously said the figure is at least eight billion dollars plus interest.
“The United States has still not responded. But if they do respond, I will speak to the guide (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and we can start to negotiate,” Rafsanjani said. The charismatic politician, who has already served as Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997, is campaigning for a comeback on a platform of closer engagement with the international community and moving away from hard-line revolutionary values.
Seen as a pragmatic conservative, the frontrunner in the June 17 polls has also said he thinks the problem of relations with Washington needs to be “solved”. Iran’s supreme leader, however, is seen as being against any rapprochement. But Rafsanjani, a pillar of the regime throughout its 26-year history, said that Khamenei’s predecessor, the revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomenei, had personally requested before his death and “by letter, that seven problems be resolved, notably that of the United States”.
As for his relations with Khamenei — the subject of speculation that a power struggle may be on the horizon — Rafsanjani told the paper the two were “great friends and maybe even had the purest friendship that ever existed”. Informal opinion polls have placed Rafsanjani as leading the pack of eight candidates approved to run in the June 17 poll, which will mark the end of reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s second and final term in office.
Seen as running a distant second is former national police chief and hardliner Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, but apparently gaining ground is the main reformist candidate Mostafa Moin. The main reformist party is hoping Moin can force a second-round runoff vote and go on to score a shock win against Rafsanjani. There are also three more hardliners in the race — Ali Larijani, Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Mohsen Rezai — all veterans of the hard-line Revolutionary Guards, and two more from the embattled reformist camp, Mehdi Karoubi and Mohsen Mehr-Alizadeh.
The four hard-liners came under increasing pressure from supporters yesterday to agree on just one of their number to stand in a bid to ensure a right-wing victory. But so far, not one of the quartet has shown any sign of standing aside. “The opinion polls are showing that the votes for the conservatives, put together, are higher than for each of the other candidates. But if they all stay in the race, not one of them could win,” wrote Hossein Shariatmadari, director of the hard-line Kayhan evening newspaper.
“If these four could reach an agreement on just one of them standing, victory is certain,” he wrote. Shariatmadari, an outspoken pillar of Iran’s religious right, said “the solution is to put them all in a mosque and cut them off from contacts with their respective entourage. There they will be face to face with Allah, and will understand the need to choose a single candidate from among themselves.”
Qalibaf, Larijani, Ahmadinejad and Rezai are also veteran commanders from the Revolutionary Guards, the powerful ideological army set up after the revolution. The decision of all of them to stand has bemused many in the right-wing camp. Larijani, a former state media boss and adviser to Khamenei, is trailing Qalibaf, while Ahmadinejad and Rezai are shown with just a few percentage points each.
One hard-line newspaper said two of the four fundamentalists were mulling a pullout with just over a week to go before the election. “According to our information, two of them will withdraw in favor of one of the others, and this will have a positive effect,” the Ressalat paper said, as other papers said the two were Ahmadinejad and Rezai. Both have denied plans to withdraw and denounced the “pressure”.
