Feb 3, 2017

TEHRAN, Iran — Spouses of politicians rarely take center stage on Iran’s political scene and, for the most part, remain entirely out of the public eye. Few Iranians know very much about their presidents' wives, including their names. Effat Marashi, however, is an exception.

The wife of the late Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was born into a prominent clerical family. One year younger than her husband, she married Rafsanjani in 1959 at the age of 23, when the future two-time president of Iran was a young seminary student. Marashi would later become one of the most political and high-profile wives of an Iranian president.

Marashi wrote in her memoir, “Step by Step with the Cedar,” “I, Effat Marashi, am the wife of the devoted scholar, pious cleric, famous Iranian politician who was schooled in the discipline of the Household of the Prophet [Muhammad], a noble and honorable human being, his eminence Ayatollah Sheikh Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The dear people of Iran mostly know of me because of two incidents. The first incident was in 1979, when I played a part in protecting my husband, who was miraculously saved, from an assassination attempt. The second incident is related to the 2009 presidential elections and the unfortunate incidents that took place following those elections. Certain sentences uttered by me while I was casting my vote at the Jamaran Prayer Hall were published by the media outlets and used as an excuse by the hard-liners to attack my husband and children.”

The assassination attempt took place in September 1979, a few months after the Islamic Revolution. Members of the militant group Furqan, at the time engaged in a series of attacks on revolutionary leaders, entered Rafsanjani’s home and tried to shoot him. Marashi confronted the gunmen and jumped in front of her husband, resulting in the bullets hitting his abdomen instead of his head. Her confrontation with the attackers, which Rafsanjani himself describes in his memoirs, resulted in them fleeing and Rafsanjani escaping death. Marashi's influential role in her husband’s political life and her bravery during the attempt on his life are laid out in Rafsanjani’s memoirs, in which he also discusses their disagreements on some political issues.

Marashi’s strength as a woman in Iranian political life, albeit most influentially behind the scenes, appears to have influenced her daughters, who are as politically active as her sons Mohsen and Mehdi and have never lived in the shadow of men. Indeed, Faezeh and Fatemeh have been even more politically active than their brothers, perhaps evidence of the absence of a stridently patriarchal atmosphere in the Rafsanjani household. It would not be surprising if Marashi were the one responsible for such an environment in her home.