Presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was the 5th and 6th government of Iran after … At age 14, Akbar Rafsanjani traveled to Qom to pursue advanced Islamic studies. Iran's ex-President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a dominant figure in the country's politics since the 1980s, has died at the age of 82. He was a president that favored closer ties with the West. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran, died at 82 on Sunday. Hashemi Rafsanjani, in full Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, also spelled ʿAlī Akbar Hāshimī Rafsanjānī, (born August 25, 1934, Bahremān, Iran—died January 8, 2017, Tehrān), Iranian cleric and politician, who was president of Iran from 1989 to 1997. Our Tehran bureau chief explains what Rafsanjani … Akbar Hashemi was born in 1934 as the second of nine children of Ali Hashemi, a modest farmer and local clergyman in the remote Kermanian town of Rafsanjan—thus the family name, Rafsanjani.