Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, the only major Iranian figure who advocated reaching out to America, made indirect overtures to the Bush administration in the period leading up to the Iranian election but was rebuffed, according to local businessman Barry O’Connell, who frequently travels to Iran.

State Department personnel referred pejoratively to Rafsanjani, the political figure best known outside Iran and most often favored by the business community in Iran and elsewhere, as “that old fox” and “that old wheeler dealer,” O’Connell said. Among feelers preceding the election last June, Iran had conveyed messages through members of its legislative assembly via business contacts, which reached the South East Asia section of the State Department. According to Department personnel, O’Connell said, messages that Rafsanjani was interested in dealing with the U.S. were relayed “upstairs” to the seventh floor offices of the Secretary of State.

The feelers were ignored. Asked whether the Bush administration opposed Rafsanjani and influenced the Iranian election, O’Connell answers, “Very much so.”

Interestingly, there were other impediments to cooperation with moderate or secular or business-oriented Iranians in the weeks leading up to the election, including restraints to travel in and out of Iranian air space, imposed with the cooperation of elements in the business community and government contractors. In any case, the administration rebuffs decreased the ability of Rafsanjani to draw support. “He was almost the only one reaching out to America, and they treated him this way?” O’Connell comments. “They [said] it to me personally, so it is reasonable to assume that they said it to others. This administration would not deal with him at all.”

Responding to questions about the other Iranian candidates, O’Connell says that the administration “didn’t seem concerned about Ahmadinejad at all.” There was no apparent concern, at the policy-making level, that some hardliner or radical fundamentalist might win the election as a result of its actions. The possibility, treated as inevitability in rightwing publications and think tanks associated with White House Middle East policy, seems not to have been regarded as an outcome to be avoided.

Since the election, Rafsanjani has increased in his powers, according to O’Connell. “He is not out of power at all.” The new President, Ahmadinejad, gets “all the spotlight” but does not have much power. ~Margie Burns, The Montgomery County Sentinel

If this is right, we can conclude one of a couple things: 1) Washington bungled the best chance at rapprochement with Iran in a generation out of incompetence; 2) Washington ignored Rafsanjani’s approaches because the goverment wanted an even more extreme figurehead whom they could more effectively vilify in order to force a confrontation with Iran. Knowing this administration, both incompetence and provocation were probably involved.

It is a credible report that Ahmadinejad’s influence is limited: like Khatami before him, as President his real powers are few, and he stumbled early on by engaging in Bush-like cronyism in his ministry selections that aggravated and antagonised the real powers-that-be (thus the over-the-top fanatical speeches, perhaps to ingratiate himself with the real power structure or to win back some public support). If Khatami was the ineffectual representative of the educated reformers, few and far between as they obviously were, Ahmadinejad is the voice of the poor Iranian common man, especially the legions of unemployed, for good and ill. As the jingoes are so fond of reminding us, the Iranian government is not particularly interested in what the common man or his representative has to say–Ahmadinejad’s influence and power have been overblown in the Western press on account of ignorance and the desire in some circles to spark a confrontation. ‘Hardliner’ that he is, he is an Evo Morales to Tehran’s ruling class, but lacking the same power as President.