Chairman of Iran’s Expediency Council Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivers a speech during a meeting with a number of intellectual women in Tehran on July 2, 2013.<\/p>\n
The chairman of Iran\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s Expediency Council says the country\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s next administration should try to reduce the impacts of the \u00c5\u201ccruel\u201d US-engineered sanctions against the Iranian people.\n<\/p>\n
In a meeting with a number of intellectual women in Tehran on Tuesday, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani expressed hope that the next administration would \u00c5\u201ctake practical steps\u201d and adopt a foreign policy based on \u00c5\u201creal interaction\u201d with the world in order to curb the effects of the sanctions on ordinary citizens.\n<\/p>\n
The former Iranian president said the administration of President-elect Hassan Rohani will have to solve a range of economic problems through cooperation with the Judiciary and the Majlis (Parliament).\n<\/p>\n
Rafsanjani also urged Rohani to adopt pragmatic policies on domestic and foreign fronts, and advised him not to monopolize power.\n<\/p>\n
Rohani won 50.7 percent of the June 14 presidential election to secure an outright victory. In the Iranian system, if no presidential candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, the two top candidates must face off in a run-off election.\n<\/p>\n
Nearly 50.5 million Iranians, including more than 1.6 million first-time voters, were eligible to participate in the presidential election. The Interior Ministry put the voter turnout at 72.7 percent.\n<\/p>\n
Rohani currently represents Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei in the Supreme National Security Council and is also a member of the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts. He is also the director of the Expediency Council’s Center for Strategic Research.\n<\/p>\n
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