NEWS ANALYSIS : Iran’s Rafsanjani, Guarding His Political Flanks, Steers a More Militant Course

NICOSIA, Cyprus —  In a Muslim world adrift on policy, its future clouded, Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani has suddenly begun steering into more militant waters.

Leading the first Iranian delegation to an Islamic summit conference since the 1979 revolution that toppled the monarchy, Rafsanjani railed last month against the American-devised peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Robed and wearing his traditional white turban, he looked out on largely Western-attired delegates to the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Dakar, Senegal, and told them:

“The continuation of multifaceted jihad (holy war), strengthening the intifada ( uprising) and continuous struggles are the only ways to regain the rights of the oppressed people of Palestine.

“Overreliance on the arrogant powers, the United States in particular, contradicts the lofty interests” of the Muslim world.

A week later, Rafsanjani was in Khartoum, hailing the fundamentalist government of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and, according to intelligence reports, nailing down an agreement to arm Bashir’s military.

The West calls him a moderate, Middle Easterners settle for pragmatist, but Rafsanjani is a hard man to classify. In the past month, he has been setting a course that might even have brought a smile to his mentor, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of revolutionary Iran and icon of Islamic fundamentalism.

But which Rafsanjani is this? After his hard-line stumping in Senegal and Sudan, the president delivered a message at Tehran University’s Friday prayers, where Iranian leaders traditionally have set their political course. “We can become the shining light of the world of Islam, provided we act with consciousness and statesmanship,” he said. “We don’t need to say extremist things. We don’t need to put forth impractical slogans, demands that cannot be realized but unduly frighten people and hinder us.”

Filtered through the screens of Islamic rhetoric and Iranian politics, Rafsanjani’s words and actions come closest to pragmatism, the political art of doing the possible. His primary goals are to rebuild the economy, ravaged by revolution, Western withdrawal and the long war with Iraq; to heighten Iran’s standing in the Muslim world and stay in power in Tehran.

Rafsanjani faces numerous obstacles, however, most notably on his home turf. On April 10, new elections will be held for the 270-seat Parliament, the Majlis, where a fundamentalist majority has fought Rafsanjani’s policies--and his growing personal power--tooth and nail since he succeeded Khomeini as president in 1989.

A slick manipulator of the revolutionary government he helped design, Rafsanjani has been able to move ahead by placing his supporters on councils that can overrule Parliament.

He has made enemies, however, and in Iranian politics, wide-open and rough once the candidate has passed the test of revolutionary loyalty, the president will have to watch his flanks in the campaigning. Wrapping himself in the flag of Islam abroad will help.

Rafsanjani needs a supportive Parliament to pursue his policy of rebuilding relations with the Western powers and seeking foreign investment. Khomeini’s flatly anti-Western positions, and Iranian meddling abroad, cost Tehran important ties. France and Britain re-established relations only last year; the Bush Administration has shown no inclination to follow suit.

Without Western investment, analysts see little chance that Rafsanjani can bolster an economy plagued by hyperinflation and damaged industrial capacity.

Beyond internal factors influencing his recent hard-line statements, the Iranian president and his followers also show clear concern that the Muslim countries lack confidence and goals after the disastrous defeat of Iraq in its war with the Western powers. They are, after all, the inheritors of Khomeini’s grand ambitions.

“No one should be surprised by Rafsanjani’s positions,” said Ali Safavi, a spokesman for the People’s Moujahedeen, leftist, anti-regime Iranian militants. “Remember, he was a disciple of Khomeini, never straying from him. Why would people think he’s pro-Western?”

Nevertheless, some crucial presidential policies have been welcomed in the West. Rafsanjani is given credit for helping to end the ordeal of the foreign hostages in Beirut, going directly against some of his political enemies at home.

One of these was Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, the former interior minister who fathered the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon and gave Khomeini his first visible success in exporting his revolution. Rafsanjani also held Iranian forces out of the Persian Gulf War, easing a strategic allied concern.

Whether Rafsanjani can lift Iran to leadership in the Muslim world is debatable. The Iranians are Shiite Muslims, and other than holding majorities in Lebanon and Iraq, the sect is a small minority in a sea of Sunnis, just 10% of the total. The Muslims of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia tend to look to Saudi Arabia, the site of Islam’s holiest cities, as a spiritual example. And the Arab Muslims tend to regard Iranians as Persians first and Muslims second.