In blow to Iranian reform movement, Rafsanjani bows out of top clerical post

The Iranian reform movement lost a key inside asset Tuesday when Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stepped down from his post as head of the country's most powerful clerical committee.

State television and news agencies reported that hardliner Ayatollah Mohammad Reza Mahdavi Kani, 80, was elected as new head of the Assembly of Experts, according to Agence France-Presse.

The 86-member assembly chooses Iran's supreme leader and can dismiss him. Rafsanjani, who was president from 1989 to 1997, had held the post for the past four years but did not contest it again.

"I announce that if Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani is ready to take the responsibility of the Assembly of Experts, I will not run for the post," Rafsanjani said, AFP reported.

Rafsanjani is considered a moderate and pragmatic conservative. But he has never hidden his disdain for Ahmadinejad, who defeated him in the 2005 presidential election.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that the move underscored the growing rivalries among Iran's powerful elite and pointed to a lack of tolerance for figures such as Rafsanjani, "who is loyal to the core principles of the Islamic Republic but sympathetic to the opposition's more moderate views."

According to Reuters, Rafsanjani lost his platform as a Friday prayer leader in 2009 after publicly criticizing the suppression of opposition protests against Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.

As president, Rafsanjani implemented a program of national reconstruction and a limited economic opening to the outside world and was re-elected in 1993, serving until 1997. When he ran again for president in 2005, he was defeated by hardline populist Ahmadinejad.