Why the Death of Iran’s Leading Moderate Could Strengthen Its Reformists

CMES AM candidate Amir H. Mahdavi, who is also a researcher at Brandeis University's Crown Center for Middle East Studies, writes in the Washington Post that, with the recent death of Iran's former president and leading moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani, many are concerned that current President Hassan Rouhani will be overpowered by the conservative religious establishment and a controlling Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But Mahdavi says that Rouhani may in fact emerge stronger from Rafsanjani's death.