A leadership neutered

摘要

He was the beardless mullah who hurled thousands of soldiers to their deaths during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. He was a kingmaker, arranging for his candidate to succeed Ayatollah Ruhol-lah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic's first supreme leader, after his death in 1989. Finally, he was a ruthless but pragmatic president who accumulated Croesus-like wealth. Now, at 76, rejected by the establishment he once ruled, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (pictured above) has become just another wistful revolutionary, singed by the flames he once fanned.