Deep down, Ali Larijani always believed that the western powers were bent on destroying Iran’s revolutionary regime, for which he had fought on the battlefield.
The prescience of that inner conviction has now been vindicated in lethal fashion as Larijani has become the latest establishment figure to die at the hands of Israel, killed in an apparently targeted airstrike, according to reports.
It came frothing to the surface when the Guardian interviewed him in June 2006, when he was in the thick of tense and protracted cat-and-mouse negotiations with the west over Iran’s nuclear programme.
As secretary of the supreme national security council – the same position he held at the time of his death – Larijani, a former Revolutionary Guards commander, was the point man in a dispute that had seemed to have risen to existential levels for the regime which he served and its arch enemy Israel.
He had been guarded throughout an interview conducted in his office in Tehran with three Guardian journalists, Simon Tisdall, Ewen MacAskill and myself – until I asked him if he considered the western concerns over Iran’s uranium enrichment programme to be genuine.
“Sir, I think you know the answer to that question,” he said, becoming animated and fixing me with a clear-eyed gaze.
“If it was not the nuclear matter, they would have come up with something else … the pressure they are putting us under is reason enough for us to be suspicious.”
It was a revealing moment of clarity into the state of mind of a man who otherwise appeared to be inscrutable – an impression compounded by the fact that Larijani was talking to us through an interpreter.
Twenty years later, the interview seems eerily prophetic in other ways, as Larijani warned that “the price of oil will skyrocket” in the event of a conflict and discussed the potential closure of the strait of Hormuz.
My other distinct memory of the encounter is when I thanked Larijani in Farsi at the end of the interview for talking with us. He smiled warmly, although whether in appreciation at my attempts to communicate in his mother tongue or in condescension at the inadequacy of my efforts was unclear.
It was not my first experience with Larijani. I had observed him at a press conference the year before, when he was standing as a candidate in the 2005 presidential election. He had seemed a relatively colourless figure, and made little impression on me or the electorate. The election was subsequently won by the far more volatile character of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
That his visceral suspicions of western motives were borne out before his death will not have been a surprise to him.
Yet – committed regime loyalist that he was – he may have hoped for something better.
As national security supremo under Ahmadinejad’s government, the pragmatic and thoughtful Larijani often bristled at the demagogic president’s provocative and headline-grabbing rhetoric on the nuclear issue, seeing it as an obstacle to his attempts to reach an accord with the west that would grant the Islamic Republic a measure of security.
He tried to resign several times as Ahmadinejad ratcheted up international tensions with his showy gambits, which included repeated jibes at Israel and ostentatiously denying the Holocaust. Finally, his resignation was accepted in October 2007, in what was seen at the time as a sign that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, sided with Ahmadinejad over Larijani.
But Larijani – one of five brothers who all occupied prominent roles in the regime – remained firmly within the establishment.
He later became the speaker of the Majles, Iran’s parliament, a position which kept him in the public eye. And he remained firmly within Khamenei’s orbit, even if his views were not the ones that carried sway.
As civil war swept through neighboring Syria, Larijani was believed to have opposed Khamenei’s policy of bolstering the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s ally, despite misgivings over Assad’s deadly crackdown on rebel forces.
Larijani twice more tried to run for the presidency but his candidacy was rejected by the guardian council, a clerical vetting body. No explanation was given, but some analysts speculated that one reason was the fact that his daughter lived in the US, while two of his nephews were based in the UK and Canada.
Opposition activists highlighted the western domiciles of Larijani’s relatives this year as the regime’s bloody suppression of Iran’s latest protest movement – at the cost of thousands of lives – showed Larijani’s star once again to be in the ascendant.
Khamenei had put Larijani in charge of crushing the protests, according to reports from inside Iran, a task he fulfilled with ruthless efficiency.
Whether Larijani would have continued on that uncompromising path will remain a matter of speculation. Reports have suggested that he opposed the recent decision to replace Khamenei as supreme leader with his son, Mojtaba – and instead would have preferred a more moderate candidate in a conciliatory gesture toward Iranians chafing under the strictures of dogmatic theocratic rule.
His death has rendered that discussion moot. But not so his long-ago premonition that the west was pursuing regime change.
-
Robert Tait was the Guardian’s correspondent in Tehran from February 2005 until December 2007
