Behind the Scenes: Who Is Really Controlling Iran?

With renewed talk of a deal between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, much attention has focused on who holds real authority in Tehran. The declared Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, son and purported heir to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has not been seen publicly since his father was killed in American and Israeli air strikes on February 28. Whether he is alive, badly wounded, or operating through handlers, his absence raises a deeper question: who is truly controlling Iran? The answer, I would argue, lies not with the Khameneis but with a powerful political dynasty that has shaped the Islamic Republic from its earliest days and continues to do so from the shadows.

I was born in Rafsanjan, the same city as Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who served as the fourth President of Iran from 1989 to 1997 and was widely regarded as one of the most politically skilled figures the Islamic Republic ever produced. He was no mere idealistic revolutionary. He was a shrewd operator who mastered the art of consolidating power within political and economic institutions while projecting an image of pragmatic moderation to the outside world.

Rafsanjani was married to Effat Marashi, and they had five children who collectively came to dominate large swaths of Iranian public life. His eldest son, Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, led the Tehran Metro system and later chaired the Tehran City Council. His daughter Faezeh Hashemi served in parliament, edited the newspaper “Zan,” (Women) and cultivated a reputation as a women’s rights activist. Another daughter, Fatemeh Hashemi, worked in health-related charitable foundations. Another son, Mehdi Hashemi, operated in the energy and telecommunications sectors, while his youngest son, Yasser Hashemi, was active in academic and institutional circles. Beyond the immediate family, numerous grandchildren, other relatives, and members of his wife’s family extended the dynasty’s reach across Iranian politics, media, education, and commerce.

At home in Rafsanjan, residents called them the “Rafsanjani mafia family.” That description was not hyperbole. The city is famous for its pistachios, and the family did not accumulate their wealth by farming them. Instead, their political influence allowed them to control large portions of the pistachio trade and extract profit from the labor of local farmers. My father planted acres of pistachio trees. After each harvest, he and many other farmers had little choice but to sell their crops at depressed prices to processing and trading companies associated with the Rafsanjani network. Those companies would then export the pistachios at substantially higher prices, capturing the margin that should have gone to the men and women who grew the crop. With no other means to export their crops, local farmers were repeatedly victimized by the Rafsanjani extortion.

The family also sold shares of its business to local farmers, promising attractive returns. My father invested, hoping to build a better future for us. The returns never came. Many other families had identical experiences. This pattern of economic extortion, conducted under the protection of political power, is precisely why so many people in Rafsanjan referred to them as the mafia without embarrassment.

The family’s arrogance was personal as well as structural. I remember as a child feeling genuinely intimidated by them. The sense that they could mistreat others without consequence was not an impression we invented; it was a daily reality. One incident captures this well. While walking home from school with a friend, the daughter-in-law of Ayatollah Rafsanjani and her mother stopped their car beside us and began screaming, calling us “whores” because a few strands of hair were visible beneath our mandatory headscarves. We were children. The shock and humiliation of that moment stayed with me for years.

Years later, living in America, I was stunned to see the U.S. State Department promoting Faezeh Hashemi Rafsanjani as a defender of Iranian women’s rights. To women like me, who had lived under the weight of this family’s influence, it was not merely ironic. It was a profound insult to every woman who suffered under rules her family helped enforce and to the broader “Women, Life, Freedom” movement.

Critics of the family argue that their influence extends far beyond Iran’s borders. They contend that the Rafsanjanis have used their accumulated wealth and international connections to shape how Iranian politics is presented to Western audiences, funding certain Persian-language media outlets, promoting individuals associated with the fake reformist movement, and placing allies in political, academic, and policy institutions in the United States and Europe. While figures such as Mojtaba Khamenei correctly attract scrutiny over foreign assets, the Rafsanjani family’s reported international holdings have received far less attention.

In recent years, Faezeh Rafsanjani became more publicly visible after reformist circles circulated videos showing hardliners insulting her over disagreements with the political system. She was periodically imprisoned, and her supporters presented these episodes as evidence of genuine resistance. In my view, this narrative was carefully constructed. The real purpose was to cultivate her as a credible opposition figure, giving her access to genuine political prisoners, allowing her to gather information, and positioning her as a trusted voice inside the dissent community while remaining fundamentally loyal to the system her family helped build.

Her own words reinforce this assessment. In interviews, Faezeh Rafsanjani has sharply criticized Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who enjoys the trust of millions of Iranians as a unifying opposition figure, while speaking warmly of Masih Alinejad, whose connections to the fake reformist network have been widely exposed and whose legitimacy among ordinary Iranians is minimal. One quote from one of these interviews exposes her duplicity and only makes sense if Alinejad is a fake reformist who supports the regime or can be manipulated by it, “I have great respect for the work of Masih Alinejad. Initiatives such as My Stealthy Freedom, White Wednesdays, Every Citizen a Journalist, and My Camera Is My Weapon have all had positive impacts. However, despite appreciating her activism, I have never supported a revolution. I do not believe that revolution would be beneficial for the country. I have also never been anti-government or supported overthrowing the regime.”

She has also stated that she has never opposed the Islamic Republic itself and has expressed acceptance of the idea that Mojtaba Khamenei could lead the country as Supreme Leader. “If a new leader must be chosen after Khamenei, I would prefer Mojtaba Khamenei. Some critics argue that succession should not be hereditary, but I disagree…I believe that if Mojtaba Khamenei were to come to power, his younger age and potentially different mindset could bring positive changes as well.”

These are not the positions of a genuine dissident. They are the positions of someone invested in the regime’s continuation under more palatable management, coincidentally, as part of the Rafsanjani family mafia.

The Hashemi Rafsanjani family’s enduring role in Iranian politics is not accidental. It is the product of decades of deliberate strategy: building economic monopolies at home, exporting carefully selected opposition figures abroad, cultivating influence in Western media and institutions, and ensuring that any political transition serves their interests rather than those of the Iranian people. As long as that network remains intact, the question of who sits in the Supreme Leader’s chair is, in many ways, secondary. The real power in Iran has never resided solely in any single office. It has always been distributed across the networks that the Rafsanjani dynasty, more than any other family, helped create and continues to sustain.

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Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity.   She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com.

Marzi also is the founder and president of NEW PERSIA whose mission is to be the voice of persecuted Christians and oppressed women under Islam, expose the lies of the Iranian Islamic regime, and restore the relationships between Persians, Jews, and Christians. www.NewPersia.org.