Mohsen Hashemi, the son of the late President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (1934-2017), has claimed in an interview that his father’s death was not “natural”, adding that the Supreme Leader of Iran is the one wanting to pretend otherwise.
On Saturday, January 15, Mohsen Hashemi told Etemad Online that he and his family had not been allowed to view CCTV footage from the pool where his father had reportedly died from a heart attack. But there was no water in his father’s lungs, meaning he did not drown.
Against the former president’s wishes, he said, the Revolutionary Guards had replaced his bodyguards prior to the incident. As such, he said, there was not strong enough evidence to prove either way whether his father died of natural causes or was assassinated.
Mohsen Hashemi, a reformist, is the current chairman of Tehran City Council. He also told the intervieweer that he had discussed the possibility of his father’s assassination with Ali Khamenei and Hossein Taeb, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organization. But, he said, the security agencies had dismissed the possibility as “nonsense”.
Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died on January 8, 2017 at the age of 82. This is not the first time allegations of foul play linked to his death have been raised by family members. One of his sons, Mohammad Hashemi, contends that he was fit and healthy before the heart attack; a daughter, Fatemeh, claimed in 2018 that the towel wrapped around her father was contaminated with radioactive material.
In April 2021, Masih Mohajeri, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Islamic Republic, said Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had told him in 2014 of plans to kill him. Mohajeri said Rafsanjani had taken him into a private room and told him “a shocking event” was planned for later that year.
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