Khomeini against ‘Death to America': Rafsanjani

TEHRAN: Iran’s ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (pictured) has aroused controversy after saying in a new book that revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini favoured dropping the mantra of ‘Death to America.’

The revelation in the latest edition of Rafsanjani’s diaries comes amid growing strains between Tehran and Washington, but also after landmark talks between Iranian and US officials on security in Iraq.

The slogan of ‘Death to America’ symbolises Iran’s enmity with the US and is chanted by the faithful after Friday prayers and often during speeches by the republic’s leaders.

Rafsanjani’s comment comes in an entry from July 5, 1984, five years before Khomeini’s death and in the midst of the 1980-1988 war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq which cost a million lives on both sides.

“Imam Moussavi, an MP from Shoushtar, also came to visit me suggested banning the slogans of ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to the Soviet Union’,” writes Rafsanjani.