Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani

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Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani (born ~1970) is a son of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran and current Chairman of the Assembly of Experts and of the Expediency Discernment Council, and patriarch of one of the "best connected and most influential of the families" in Iran, worth an estimated $1 billion.

Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani himself as of 2004 was a director at National Iranian Gas Company and heads the unit that develops compressed natural gas for cars, according to Iranian.com.^[1]

In 1997, Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, the then-head of state-owned Gaz Iran Company, reportedly received a €60,000,000 ($80,000,000) bribe from Total oil company, to give Total a favorable contract in PSEEZ gas fields^[2]. The alleged bribery, which was made public in 2007, has been denied by Mehdi Hashemi, who has threatened the newspapers publishing the story with prosecution. The CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, is currently under investigation in France with regards to this incident.^[3]

Another controversial issue involving Mehdi Hashemi was his reported comments to Barbara Slavin in a February 2005 issue of the American newspaper USA Today. There he allegedly told Slavin that his family was "not eager to see" their father Akbar Hashemi run for president of Iran again "because `we have everything` already". However, Mehdi Hashemi declared "Iran needs him again", and furthermore "if elected" his father would "change Iran's constitution" to reduce the power of Iran's Supreme Leader of Iran and "make the position a ceremonial role akin to `the king of England.`"^[4] This may have crossed an unwritten "red line" of Iranian politics which forbids questioning rule by clerics (velayat-e faqih) and direct criticism of the Supreme Leader.^[5]