The Comeback Cleric

By Scott MacLeod, Nahid Siamdoust

For a man who has spent nearly a decade out of the spotlight, Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani still knows how to make an entrance. Arriving for an interview with TIME inside a domed marble Tehran palace, Rafsanjani, 70, strides in with the bounce of a man half his age. He's even accompanied by his film crew. It's all part of a slick campaign aimed at selling one of the Islamic republic's old founding fathers as a hip reformer in tune with restless young Iranians, in hopes of returning the former President to the job he left in 1997. As he settles into a gilt-trimmed chair, he says he may do a campaign commercial with the Iranian director of the recent film The Lizard, a huge hit that poked rare fun at the righteous clerics who form Iran's ruling class. "It's an idea," Rafsanjani says. "There is no script yet." He laughs when told that his son Mehdi has already jokingly come up with a title for the spot: "The Lizard II."

It might as well be "Rafsanjani: The Sequel." With Iranians set to go to the polls beginning next week for the first presidential election since 2001, Rafsanjani is poised--but with a 36% showing in opinion surveys, not guaranteed--to win a third term as President, having served twice from 1989 to 1997. Known as Iran's most cunning political actor, he has positioned himself as the most palatable compromise candidate in the eight-man race, a centrist who can act as a bridge between Iran's hard-line conservatives and its disillusioned reformers. At the same time, he is projecting a conciliatory line toward the U.S. and its European allies, with whom the Iranian regime is engaged in a high-stakes diplomatic showdown over the country's nuclear ambitions.

In an hourlong interview with TIME, Rafsanjani brushes aside the enmity that has characterized U.S.-Iranian relations since the Islamic revolution in 1979 and intensified since President George W. Bush inducted Iran into the "axis of evil" in 2002. "We don't have any problems with the people and the country of the United States," he says, adding that if the U.S. releases Iranian assets in America--billions of dollars have been frozen since 1979--"it is possible to end hostilities." Says Rafsanjani: "Whenever there has been an opportunity for reasonable cooperation, we've seized it."

Given the Islamic republic's two-year cat-and-mouse game with the U.S., European Union and U.N. over Iran's nuclear program, the world has reason to be skeptical of Rafsanjani's emollience. Iranian and European negotiators averted a possible crisis last month in Geneva when Iran agreed to shelve plans to resume uranium-enrichment activities in exchange for a European pledge to present a detailed package of economic incentives after Iran's presidential election. Rafsanjani--who stepped up Iran's nuclear efforts in the '90s with the construction, assisted by the Russians, of the Bushehr power plant--says he supports the talks but warns the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) against dragging them out. He told TIME that Iran will eventually restart work toward completing the nuclear-fuel cycle--insisting, as the Iranians long have, that the intent is to produce energy for civilian use.

"We're not willing to suspend," Rafsanjani says. "But we're ready to provide greater assurances to the world that we won't move from peaceful nuclear technology to military technology." However, the Bush Administration believes that he is not likely to abandon what the U.S. regards as the regime's ultimate goal, a nuclear weapon. "Some people think Rafsanjani is a great reformer," a senior State Department official says. "He has indicated he might want to open up relations with the U.S. But he's also the father of the Iranian nuclear program." Notes a senior White House official: "If you look at his past performance, you have to be skeptical, to say the least."

If nothing else, Rafsanjani has proved to be one of Iran's most durable politicians. A confidant of revolutionary leader Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, Rafsanjani served as the powerful speaker of the Majlis, or National Assembly, for nine years before becoming President two months after Khomeini's death in 1989. In the mid-'80s, he played a pivotal role in the secret arms-for-hostages talks with Reagan Administration officials. Rafsanjani acknowledged to TIME that "we made a limited agreement with them for receiving weapons in return for freeing hostages" held by pro-Iranian militants in Lebanon. He received a leather-bound Bible that Reagan sent as a gift through former aide Oliver North, which Rafsanjani says is inscribed with Reagan's signature.

Rafsanjani's resilience has enabled him to survive debacles that would have ruined a lesser pol. Many Iranians blame him for prolonging Iran's eight-year war with Iraq by encouraging Khomeini to continue fighting after Iran's decisive recapture of the gulf port of Khorramshahr in 1982. As President, Rafsanjani withstood criticism from human-rights activists and a German court for ignoring, if not approving, the murder by Iranian hit squads of regime opponents in Europe; the Iranian government rejected the accusations outright. Rafsanjani's critics view him as opportunistic, corrupt in financial dealings and lacking guiding principles. "Have you ever heard of Machiavelli?" asks Ibrahim Yazdi, head of the Iran Freedom Movement and a former colleague of Rafsanjani's. "His policy is always to be ambiguous. But he is a cleric, and deep down, he is a conservative."

But since announcing his candidacy for President in early May, Rafsanjani has tried to downplay his conservative reputation. When addressing young people, he emphasizes education and job opportunities but acknowledges that generation's discontent over the lack of freedom. In campaign leaflets, he promises a "transition to democracy." His makeover is testament to his ability to read political winds. The landslide re-election in 2001 of current President Mohammed Khatami made the idea of change so popular with voters that in this year's campaign everyone is posing as a reformer of some sort--even hard-line conservatives, who appear in campaign posters as smiling, gentle souls.

The question on the minds of Iranians is whether Rafsanjani can deliver as President. His supporters insist that his experience and revolutionary credentials give him the clout to push through reforms--like greater press freedom, fewer dress-code and social restrictions, and better relations with the West--that are opposed by hard-line conservatives, who control the judiciary and security forces and are backed by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei. In recent years, the mullahs have responded to the rising clamor for change by blocking reform initiatives of the elected leadership. Khatami was so intimidated by Khamenei that in 2000 he wouldn't shake President Bill Clinton's hand at the U.N. without calling the Supreme Leader back home for permission, which Khamenei refused.

Sources close to Khatami say Rafsanjani and Khamenei, whose rivalry dates to the revolutionary days, have a "poor relationship" and that Khamenei sent a message through Khatami instructing Rafsanjani not to run for the presidency. Rafsanjani's response: "I am the pillar of the revolution. I don't take permission." When Khamenei overturned the supervisory Guardian Council's decision to disqualify reformist presidential candidate Mustafa Moin, some Iranian analysts saw it as an attempt to whittle down Rafsanjani's vote totals and make him a weakened victor.

Rafsanjani says he plans to reach out to disaffected young Iranians--"If they have views and opinions, they shouldn't have any problems expressing them," he says--but he's unlikely to risk his position by pushing for radical reform. "I certainly believe in democracy, but I believe we have to take this course step by step," he says. A senior White House official says that given Rafsanjani's conservative impulses, the U.S. will continue to "talk directly to the Iranian people" in hopes of strengthening popular opposition to the regime. Yet Rafsanjani's gradualist approach is finding a receptive audience among some young Iranians who look at Iraq and conclude that regime change isn't as easy as it sounds.

"Democracy won't come overnight," says Mohammed Moaddab, 27, a graduate student in international affairs who voted twice for Khatami but is supporting Rafsanjani. "We need realism." That may not satisfy idealists in Tehran or Washington. But with Rafsanjani as President, that may be the most they can expect. --With reporting by Matthew Cooper and Elaine Shannon/ Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris and J.F.O. McAllister/London

With reporting by Matthew Cooper/Washington, Elaine Shannon/Washington, Bruce Crumley/Paris, J.F.O. McAllister/London