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 Mir-Hossein Mousavi presidential campaign the center of the Iranian politics, however over time he shifted more towards the reformist camp by declaring his support for reforms. Although some active members of the conservative camp, such as Emad Afroogh, as well as the conservative newspaper Jomhouri Eslami, supported Mousavi's candidacy, he did not receive the official backing of any major conservative party. His candidacy made it harder for the conservatives to support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and large conservative parties, such as the Combatant Clergy Association, did not back the current President for the second term of office. The BBC reported that Mousavi "called for greater personal