The ayatollah's long shadow

摘要

THEY came to praise him and to bury him. The eminent former butts of his criticism filled the front rows of his funeral and showered him with accolades. Ayatol-lah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was the architect of Iran's revolution, they said, who protected it during the Iran-Iraq war, and rescued it from economic siege afterwards. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, with whom he spent two decades sparring, tweeted that he was "his old friend and comrade", and read the last rites. Fellow clerics organised the biggest funeral since Ayatollah Khomeini's, assigned him a golden tomb next to the revolution's founder, and promised to name a street after him. They closed schools and broadcast the ceremony live. Over 2m Iranians attended, said the authorities.