US officials “made a big issue of the nuclear issue and they are mobilizing public opinion,” Rafsanjani said. “Because of the dangers threatening us, we should pay attention to the supreme leader’s decree for national unity and Islamic cohesion. We should not let ourselves be provoked and give an excuse for the enemy.”

Michel Potocki, an expert on Iran’s legal system and a scholar at the Sorbonne in Paris, said that Rafsanjani “symbolizes a more moderate faction opposed to Ahmadinejad faction. But I’m not sure he will be capable of making any important decisions. Everything depends on the supreme leader, after all”.

Rafsanjani won 41 of the votes cast by 86 senior clerics to become chairman of the Assembly of Experts. The next biggest vote-getter was Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a religious extremist who garnered 34 of the ballots. Unlike Rafsanjani, Jannati believes the nation’s authority should come from God, not democratic elections. Rafsanjani also heads another pivotal body, the Expediency Council, which mediates legislative and constitutional matters.

How Rafsanjani’s new political role factors into Iran’s larger international agenda is crucial to pragmatists and moderates. He had been marginalised in recent years, and it remains to be seen whether his seemingly rising stature will have much effect in terms of curtailing the sweeping power of hardliners.

The Assembly of Experts’ main focus is to select the supreme leader; its power outside that role “has not been taken practically or traditionally serious,” said Ahmad Shirzad, a physicist and political reformist. But, he added, most of the assembly consists of influential traditionalist religious leaders who lead Friday prayers across the nation. The vote for Rafsanjani “indicates that even the traditionalists of the system are tilting toward moderation and pragmatism”, Shirzad said.