C O N F I D E N T I A L RPO DUBAI 000055

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/24/2018
TAGS: PGOV PINR IR
SUBJECT: IRAN'S RAFSANJANI CALLS 1979 EMBASSY SIEGE A "MISTAKE"

CLASSIFIED BY: Ramin Asgard, Director, Iran Regional Presence
Office, DOS.
REASON: 1.4 (b), (d)




1. (C) Expediency Council Chairman Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani gave an unusual speech at Sharif University on
November 23 in which he acknowledged several "mistakes" that had
occurred during the early period of the Islamic Revolution,
including the siege of the American Embassy, and announced that
it was now possible to criticize these mistakes. Rafsanjani
explicitly noted that he did not have any foreknowledge of the
Embassy takeover, and went so far as to point out that both he
and (now-Supreme Leader) Ali Khamenei were in Mecca together
when they learned of the siege from radio reports. A former
IRIG official noted to IRPO Poloff that this is the first time
he has heard a member of the senior leadership in Iran criticize
the attack on the Embassy. According to the source, this break
with thirty years of public defense of the embassy siege could
signal that Rafsanjani is trying to lay the foundation for a
thaw in relations between Iran and the United States.


2. (SBU) During his address to the "Thirty Years of Islamic
Revolution Congress," Rafsanjani went on to regret that many
university professors had been purged during the early years of
the Revolution. He furthered cautioned that "elites" in Iran
should not be marginalized by contemporary politicians, and
argued that their participation in the upcoming election is an
important element to building a secure future for the Islamic
Republic.


3. (C) Comment: Despite Rafsanjani's use of standard
revolutionary language in the speech -he referred to the
American Embassy as "the nest of spies" - the acknowledgement
that the act itself was a mistake is notable. By pointing out
that neither he nor Khamenei had any advance knowledge of the
attack, and that they were outside of Iran at the time and
therefore could not have participated in the decision-making
process that led then-Supreme Leader Khomeini to sanction the
siege after the fact, Rafsanjani is overtly distancing both
himself and the Supreme Leader from the event that led to the
rupture of relations between Iran and the United States.

ASGARD