He's a key Iranian politician whose name keeps coming up by opponents, supporters and experts in the bloody aftermath of the Iran's presidential elections, CNN reported.
But despite the chaos that's plagued the Islamic Republic for the past two weeks - even resulting in the brief detention of his daughter - former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has remained silent and largely unseen.
The last time the world saw Iran's assembled leadership was June 19, when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed the victory of hardline incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the hotly contested June 12 election at Friday prayers. But Rafsanjani was missing among the group of Islamic powerbrokers.
"Ayatollah Rafsanjani is the second most powerful man in Iran - up until now certainly - has always been in opposition to Ahmadinejad," Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American author, told CNN Saturday. "He opposed him in the presidential race in 2005 and has been relatively opposed to him publicly and very opposed to him privately in his policies."
Majd said Rafsanjani is a very influential figure in Khamenei's circle, but he's made "a real break with the supreme leader in this case."
Whether the leadership will regroup to resolve the situation internally rather than air out the laundry publicly remains to be seen, he added.
"Whether the leadership will come together again and say we have to solve all of these problems internally rather than have them be public for the sake and security of the government and the system is a question that is an open question."
Rafsanjani, who supported Mir Hossein Moussavi - a reformist and chief rival to hardline incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - is chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which is responsible for appointing or removing the supreme leader.
There were widespread rumors that Rafsanjani has been in the Iranian city of Qom trying to rally a coalition of clerics and political figures against Khamenei, who fully supports Ahmadinejad.
During televised debates leading up to the election, Ahmadinejad publicly accused Rafsanjani of corruption as the unprecedented drama over the presidential race continued to grip voters.
For his part, Rafsanjani said Ahmadinejad's "baseless and irresponsible" statements brought back "bitter memories" of anti-revolutionary groups in the aftermath of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Rafsanjani, 75, is one of Iran's richest citizens. He was a political activist in the 1960s and 1970s, and was imprisoned several times under the U.S.-backed Shah. Rafsanjani became a close confident of Ayatollah Khomenei, who led the Islamic revolution which eventually overthrew the Shah's regime in 1979.
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