Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi #Rafsanjani, Ex-President of Iran, Dies at 82 - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/08/world/middleeast/ayatollah-rafsanjani-dead.html
Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran and a founder of the Islamic Republic, who navigated the opaque shoals of his country’s theocracy as one of its most enduring, wiliest and wealthiest leaders, died on Sunday in Tehran. He was 82.
His death was announced by Iran’s state television.
As his career seesawed through periods of revolutionary zeal and confrontation with powerful conservative rivals, he was portrayed as a Machiavellian and often ruthless player in the power struggles among Iran’s elite factions, protected by his close association with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the revolutionary leader who overthrew the shah in 1979.