Comeback or last stand? Rouhani in crosshairs of Iran’s power struggle

"My father had become a thorn in their eye, so they eliminated him," Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani said in a YouTube interview.

"Killing him wasn’t the work of Russia or Israel. He sided with the people and spoke out, and they felt he was in their way — so he had to be removed," she added.

On January 8, 2017, it was officially announced that the president of Iran from 1989 to 1997 had suddenly died after swimming at a pool belonging to the Expediency Discernment Council he chaired.

Officially, his death was attributed to a heart attack, but suspicions quickly arose, fueled by Rafsanjani’s complex political legacy.

In her interview on Tuesday, Rafsanjani's daughter blamed the highest echelons of power in the Islamic Republic for her father's death.

"Who did murder your father?" the interviewer asked.

"Who did murder Amir Kabir?" she replied, referring to the widely respected Prime Minister of Qajar Iran who was murdered by the command of Naser al-Din Shah in 1852.

Rafsanjani's family has consistently voiced concerns that he may have been murdered, citing what they have described as several suspicious factors.

These include delays in transporting him to the hospital, the lack of access to CCTV footage from both the swimming pool and his office, the absence of a post-mortem examination despite their requests, a hurried burial and the disappearance of his diaries and will from his office safe shortly after his death.

In 2019, Rafsanjani’s other daughter, Fatemeh Hashemi, said in an interview that two months before her father's death, two people approached her at her university, warning her father “would be killed in a way that would make it appear a natural death.”

'Bigger Satan'

The official investigation, led by Ali Shamkhani, then Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, concluded that Rafsanjani's death was "completely natural, without any ambiguity."

Rafsanjani had played an instrumental role in the accession of Ali Khamenei to leadership in 1989 by convincing the Assembly of Experts that being a religious source of emulation (marja’-e taghlid) -- a qualification that Khamenei lacked -- was not considered as a leadership requirement.

He also claimed that the late leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, had once suggested Khamenei’s name as his successor.

Khamenei and Rafsanjani, however, had a significant falling out when Khamenei publicly endorsed his opponent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for president in 2009.

The Supreme Leader said Ahmadinejad's views were "closer" to his own than those of any other candidate, including his "friend of fifty years," Rafsanjani.

“After 2016 (Rafsanjani) openly said here and there that he had made a mistake in choosing Khamenei (as leader),” Berlin-based political analyst Mehdi Mahdavi-Azad told Iran International.

Pressures increased on him around that time, Mahdavi-Azad added citing people close to Rafsanjani including his daughters and his advisor Gholam-Ali Rajaei, and there had been warnings of a threat to his life.

Mahdavi-Azad also highlighted a speech by Khamenei on the day Rafsanjani died, which appeared to criticize him and question his revolutionary credentials.

Playing with Rafsanjani's first name, Akbar, which means bigger or older, Khamenei suggested that the Islamic Republic could be harmed if a “reprobate or misled brother” turned out to be the “bigger Satan” and played the role of the real Satan in misleading the people.

“We must be vigilant, this person is our enemy, too,” he said.

During the funeral prayers for Rafsanjani, Khamenei's omission of a sentence that traditionally attests to God that the deceased had displayed nothing but "benevolence and goodness" during his life attracted attention.

Parliament turned into a battlefield on Sunday as Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf and hardline lawmakers accused Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Javad Zarif of “undermining national interests” with their recent remarks.

“I find it necessary to express my explicit criticism of the former president and foreign minister who, precisely as our strategic partnership with Russia is progressing, have damaged this path through their statements,” Ghalibaf declared.

His comments were followed by hardline MPs chanting “Death to Fereydoun” — Rouhani’s family name. Moderates rushed to defend the duo, calling the events in parliament an orchestrated show of loyalty to Moscow.

“Have the Russians made Iranian citizens’ silence toward Kremlin policies a precondition for cooperation?” renowned commentator Ahmad Zeidabadi wrote on social media. “If so, that’s a shameful arrangement.”

‘Edited out of context’

The uproar followed circulation of a short video in which Rouhani criticized UN sanctions from 2010 onward, noting that even Russia and China had supported them.

Moderate outlets accused Rouhani’s critics of selectively editing the former president’s remarks, publishing what they said was the full version.

“He not only did not make insinuations against Russia … but also supported strengthening relations with Moscow and Beijing during his own terms,” Khabar Online wrote in a Monday editorial.

Rouhani was criticizing former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the editorial asserted, and Ghalibaf would have known this if he had not relied on “bulletins handed to him.”

Rouydad 24 — another moderate website — called the speaker’s remarks “odd for someone of his rank,” linking the controversy to a public dispute between Zarif and Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

Lavrov had branded the so-called snapback clause of the 2015 nuclear deal a “legal trap,” saying it was secretly arranged between Zarif and then–US Secretary of State John Kerry. Zarif later rejected that claim and accused Moscow of blocking Iran’s ties with the West.

‘Most-despised figure’

The confrontation quickly spilled onto social media.

Hesamoddin Ashna, a security adviser close to Rouhani, wrote on X: “It’s not wise to read aloud every paper that’s handed to you. As far as we know, Mr. Rouhani has made no recent statement about Russia.”

Foreign-policy journalist Hadi Mohammadi argued that Ghalibaf was misdirecting his anger: “Mr. Ghalibaf seems to have forgotten that it was the Russian foreign minister who began this … But attacking Rouhani is always less costly.”

Hardline lawmaker Amirhossein Sabeti hit back with harsh personal jibes at Rouhani.

The former president, Sabeti wrote on X, is “the most despised politician in Iran” for the bloody suppression of the 2019 fuel protests and carries a “delusion of higher office” — a reference to speculation that Rouhani hopes to succeed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

‘Power struggle’

Rouhani has shown markedly increased public activity after years of silence, especially in the months since the June war with Israel. He recently criticized low voter turnout in the 2020 parliamentary election, where Ghalibaf secured only 4.4 percent of Tehran’s vote.

“How can such a parliament claim to speak for 80 percent of the people?” Rouhani asked in a public statement this month.

Observers see the attacks as part of a broader power struggle.

“It’s a fight for a bigger share of the emptied pockets of Iranians and the country’s wealth,” journalist Jamshid Barzegar told Iran International.

The episode underscored how Moscow’s influence has become both a symbol and a fault line in Iran’s power struggle.

The ideas floated include a Hamas-inspired peace initiative to defuse external threats, and a sweeping cabinet reshuffle to inject “agility” into an administration facing a multitude of crises.

“There is a third option between surrender and refusal to negotiate,” renowned journalist Mohammad Ghoochani wrote in the moderate daily Sazandegi (Construction).

“That third way is active resistance against Western neo-colonialism. We should surprise the world by ending our passive diplomacy, just as Hamas did.”

Ghoochani now serves as the political chief of the centrist Executives of Construction Party, founded by allies of the late Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—widely regarded as the Islamic Republic’s most pragmatic leader.

“The current situation is a continuation of the old ‘neither war nor negotiation’ strategy. But the war has already happened. We cannot continue living in suspension,” Ghoochani added.

He also criticized Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for refusing “to sit with countries that have attacked Iran,” arguing that Tehran’s absence from the Gaza peace summit in Egypt amounted to ceding regional leadership to Israel.

‘Strategic, not tactical’

Party Secretary General Hossein Marashi also weighed in on the prospect of rapprochement with Washington, while condemning what he described as U.S. attempts to influence Iran’s defense and security policies.

“If talks are to be constructive, both sides must focus on shared concerns, chiefly reducing regional tensions,” he said.

“Any dialogue between Iran and America must be strategic, not a tactical move, which seems to be Washington’s approach.”

He warned that continued Western pressure would only deepen Iran’s alignment with Moscow and Beijing, arguing that diplomacy should be guided by national interest rather than ideology.

Marashi’s comments on foreign policy dovetailed with his economic critique—delivered in the same week—underscoring the party’s call for a broader change of course.

‘A hungry nation can’t resist’

In an editorial published last week, Marashi issued a stark warning:

“A hungry nation entangled in economic hardship and unemployment cannot sustain resistance.”

He called for a major reshuffle of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s cabinet to address Iran’s economic malaise, which he linked primarily to sweeping international sanctions.

“For 20 years, our target was 8% annual economic growth. But we’ve averaged just 1%, meaning Iran has effectively regressed by 7% each year,” he wrote in a Sazandegi editorial.

He later blamed hardliners for the “costly maneuvers” that, in his view, led to the snapback mechanism being triggered by European powers and the reimposition of UN sanctions.

Still, he reserved his harshest criticism for those attacking Iran, while defending Tehran’s record in recent conflicts in an interview with the moderate outlet Didar News:

“Many Iranians criticize the Islamic Republic’s policies, but no decent Iranian would accept compromising the country’s security or its legitimate defense rights.”

“Economic reforms and progress are meaningless without energy reform,” Ghalibaf said in a speech on Monday. “With the current energy situation, can we expect proper efficiency? Everything about it is completely wrong,” he said.

The government’s priority, he added, was not to raise prices but to restructure the energy sector. “This does not mean we want to increase energy prices – that has its own method. Raising prices is not the first step; there are several stages before that,” Ghalibaf said.

The comments come amid growing conjecture in Iranian media over a possible imminent increase in gasoline prices. Last week, President Masoud Pezeshkian said there was no doubt that fuel prices would eventually need to rise, though he acknowledged that such a move could worsen economic hardship for ordinary Iranians.

“It’s not that simple,” Pezeshkian said. “Of course it must be done, that’s obvious, but it can’t be done overnight,” he added.

Call for fair energy use

Ghalibaf described the first step in energy reform as what he called popularization, suggesting that the country’s vast energy resources must benefit all citizens equally. “This is public wealth and must reach the people fairly. It’s not acceptable that 46 percent of the population fully benefits from part of this energy while 52 percent get nothing,” he said.

Changing consumption habits, he added, is essential to avoid waste. “If culture improves, energy consumption will improve. We cannot have the heater on while people sit at home in undershirts,” he said.

The parliament speaker did not elaborate on the mechanism of the proposed popularization plan. His remarks come as Iran, despite possessing the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves, faces chronic energy shortages that disrupt industries and daily life.

In recent months, widespread blackouts and gas shortages have forced temporary shutdowns across several provinces, exposing what officials themselves have described as deep structural and managerial failures in the energy sector.

First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said on Sunday that criticism of the government’s performance was serving the enemy. Speaking at a meeting of the Market Regulation Headquarters, Aref accused outside actors of spreading “malicious and misleading analyses” following the recent 12-day conflict, which he said were being echoed domestically.

Iran’s Chamber of Commerce in September projected a worst-case scenario of a 60% currency plunge, inflation at 75%, and unemployment at 14% in the coming months.

Responding to growing discontent over the government’s handling of poverty and rising living costs, Aref said supervisory and economic institutions must “avoid giving excuses to the enemy” and “not dishearten the public.” He warned officials against airing internal disagreements in public, adding that “there is no need for officials to discuss disputes at podiums; such issues should be resolved in meetings.”

Officials defend government amid rising hardship

President Pezeshkian last week acknowledged that his administration’s economic policies were contributing to inflation, saying, “We are creating inflation. We are sleeping on gold, yet the people are hungry.” His remarks drew criticism from Javan, a newspaper affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which urged the president to address inequality instead of “repeating the word hunger.”

Mounting inflation, shrinking household purchasing power, and soaring living costs have deepened public frustration, exacerbated by the reactivation of the UN’s snapback sanctions mechanism against Iran.

Mohammad Jafar Ghaempanah, Pezeshkian’s executive deputy, also described the current situation as wartime on Sunday. Rising sanctions, he said, meant “the country must be evaluated in exceptional, not normal, circumstances.”

“Parliament members have the right to criticize the government,” Ghaempanah said. “But this is not the time to question how the country is being managed.”

Their remarks came amid intensifying domestic criticism over economic hardship, while Iranian officials continue to stress the need for “internal cohesion” against what they call a “hybrid war.”