Chairman of the Expediency Council Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died on Sunday, IRNA reported Sunday. He was hospitalized due to heart attack in a state-run hospital in the Iranian capital earlier in the day.
Rafsanjani was sought by the Argentinian government for ordering the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. This was based on the allegation that senior Iranian officials planned the attack in an August 1993 meeting, which included Ayatollah Khamanei, the Supreme Leader, Mohammad Hejazi, Khamanei’s intelligence and security advisor, Rafsanjani, then Iran’s president, Ali Fallahian, then intelligence minister, and Ali Akbar Velayati, then foreign minister.
In 1997, during the Mykonos trial in Germany, it was declared that Rafsanjani, then president of Iran, together with Ayatollah Khamenei, Velayati and Fallahian, directed the assassination of Iran’s opposition activists in Europe.
Rafsanjani served in different posts since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He was described as a pragmatic conservative, and “veteran kingmaker.” He supported a free market domestically, favoring privatization of state-owned industries, and a moderate stance internationally, seeking to avoid conflict with the United States and the West.