Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to Ruhollah Khomeini. This led to the establishment of Expediency Discernment Council, which later he chaired the council. He had an active role in Iran–Contra affair, which was divulged by Mehdi Hashemi and failed. Mehdi Hashemi was executed but Rafsanjani was the loser at internal dimension. In October 1981 presidential election, when he voted to Ali Khamenei, he said it's vote of "Imam (Khomeini), clerics and the parliament". During differences between Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Khamenei, Hashemi cleverly managed to keep the position favor or against these two perspectives and take the middle position. According to Bahman Bakhtiari, at
2009 Iranian presidential election towards the incumbent president. This finding almost exactly matches up with the proportion of the vote that Ahmadinejad received. On 1 June, a campaign office of Ahmadinejad's primary opponent, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, was torched. The office was located in the city of Qom. No group claimed responsibility for the attack. At the same time, it was reported that an assassination had been attempted against former president Mohammad Khatami by means of a bomb placed on an aircraft he was to board. Mobile phone communications were interrupted in Tehran on election day and the BBC has stated that "heavy electronic jamming" was