News Analysis - Iran Insider Sees a Chance to Seize Moment: Via NYTimes.com .

WASHINGTON — During his decades in Iranian politics, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been praised as a pragmatist, criticized as spineless, accused of corruption and dismissed as a has-been.

Now, in assailing the government’s handling of last month’s disputed presidential election, Mr. Rafsanjani, a75-year-old cleric and former president, has cast himself in a new light: as a player with the authority to interpret the ideals of Iran’s 30-year-old Islamic republic.

Using his perch as a designated prayer leader on Friday to deliver the speech of a lifetime, Mr. Rafsanjani abandoned his customary caution to demand that the government release those arrested in recent weeks, ease restrictions on the media and eradicate the “doubt” the Iranian people have about the election result. And he implicitly challenged the authority of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to make decisions without seeking consensus.

Behind the words was the assertion that for the Islamic Republic to survive, it must restore its legitimacy, reaffirm its republican institutions and find a formula for governing. To establish his own legitimacy, Mr. Rafsanjani evoked his long political history.
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Rafsanjani Acknowledges Opposition 'Doubts' Over Election, Calls For Unity: Via Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Speaking at Tehran's Friday Prayers, influential former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani used the opportunity to call for calm and unity to save the Islamic establishment from danger.

Rafsanjani, speaking at Tehran University, expressed hope that his sermon might mark a change in the future of the country, which has seen widespread protests and a violent government crackdown following a controversial presidential election.

As Rafsanjani spoke, tens of thousands of protesters gathered outside, chanting slogans such as ""Political prisoners must be freed," "Iranians might die, but won't accept oppression."
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Iran opposition leader, wife visit slain man's family: Via Los Angeles Times.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his wife are swarmed by supporters near the home. His plans to form a political front win the backing of powerful cleric Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and a key conservative.

Reporting from Beirut -- Iran's leading opposition figure and his wife emerged Tuesday night to pay their respects to the family of a 19-year-old man slain in the nation's recent weeks of violence, according to witnesses and reports on news websites.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi and his popular wife, Zahra Rahnavard, visited the family of Sohrab Aarabi in Tehran, paying tribute to the teenager whose death and whose mother's weeks-long quest to find him have emerged as symbols of the protest movement against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Photographs posted on the Gooya website showed Mousavi and Rahnavard swarmed by supporters as they approached the family's home in the city's north-central Apadana district.
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Rafsanjani Poised to Outflank Supreme Leader Khamenei: Via EurasiaNet Civil Society - Iran.

Looking past their fiery rhetoric and apparent determination to cling to power using all available means, Iran’s hardliners are not a confident bunch. While hardliners still believe they possess enough force to stifle popular protests, they are worried that they are losing a behind-the-scenes battle within Iran’s religious establishment.

A source familiar with the thinking of decision-makers in state agencies that have strong ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said there is a sense among hardliners that a shoe is about to drop. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani -- Iran’s savviest political operator and an arch-enemy of Ayatollah Khamenei’s -- has kept out of the public spotlight since the rigged June 12 presidential election triggered the political crisis. The widespread belief is that Rafsanjani has been in the holy city of Qom, working to assemble a religious and political coalition to topple the supreme leader and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"There is great apprehension among people in the supreme leader’s [camp] about what Rafsanjani may pull," said a source in Tehran who is familiar with hardliner thinking. "They [the supreme leader and his supporters] are much more concerned about Rafsanjani than the mass movement on the streets."
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