Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s former centrist president and current head of the Expediency Discernment Council, the advising body to Iran’s leader, staged unprecedented attacks against his hard-line opponents during an April 12 address at the Lady of the Revolution Conference.

Rafsanjani’s words were reminiscent of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri’s 1988 letter in which he raised the issues of oppression and the violent treatment of prisoners. That letter led to the stripping of his designation as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s successor, permanent political isolation and a long house arrest.

In his statements, Rafsanjani said, “This group [of superficial people] concern themselves with a few unveiled women on the streets but fail to espouse what should be done about oppression, what should be done about [conditions in] the prisons, what should be done about taking away people’s rights.” 

Once the second-most powerful cleric in Iran after Khomeini, Iran’s revolution leader, Rafsanjani has struggled for his political life since the 2005 presidential elections. Then, he was defeated by his staunch opponent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his star began to wane.