Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani is an Iranian politician, academic and engineer who currently serves as member and chairman of City Council of Tehran. He was the deputy director of Iran's Islamic Azad University from 2013 until 2017 and was chairman and CEO of Tehran Metro for 13 years. He was the main reformist member candidate for the fourth period of the Tehrancity council in 2013 as Tehran Mayor, but lost to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. In 2017, he was elected as a city councilor and later was elected as chairman of the council.
Rafsanjani served the defense industry until the UN resolution was executed and prisoners of war with Iraq were freed. While a member of the defence industry he worked on the production of Sejjil and Shahab missiles. During his father's time as president of Iran, Rafsanjani established the Office of Special Investigation of the President with the aim of helping identify problems and shortcomings. While in this position, Rafsanjani and his colleagues produced nearly 500 effective reports on production, exports, projects, government bureaucracy, and economic problems. Rafsanjani also held the position of the president's Chief of Staff.
Tehran Metro
Rafsanjani was the CEO of Tehran Metro for thirteen years, from 1998 until March 2011. The Tehran metro was built during his tenure. He was elected as chairman and director of Tehran Metro by Abdollah Nouri, the Interior Minister of Mohammad Khatami. While CEO of Tehran Metro, Rafsanjani separated oversight of the metro from the Interior Ministry and transferred it to Tehran municipality. He used foreign credit to help complete the metro line. When the existing Metro cars were not large enough to carry all people who wanted to use the metro, Rafsanjani used internal and external capital and established a unit that could make new cars. Rafsanjani resigned his position as CEO twice. The first time was in 2003, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was mayor of Tehran. Ahmadinejad did not accept the resignation, and Rafsanjani later reclaimed his post. In March 2011 he resigned again. This time, the mayor of Tehran accepted his resignation, but asked that Rafsanjani continue as the mayor's senior adviser as well as a member of the city board.
Mayoral candidacy
After he resigned from Tehran Metro, Rafsanjani joined the Tehran city council. At the start of the fourth period of the Tehran city council, Rafsanjani was one of the most serious reformist options. As a moderate member of city council, he stood a good chance to become mayor of Tehran; his close competition was with Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the acting mayor of Tehran at the time. After the first election in August, Rafsanjani and Ghalibaf had 15 votes each and one vote was white. On the second round of voting, Ghalibaf received 16 votes while Rafsanjani received 14, with the last vote being white.
On October 2013, by decree of Hamid Mirzadeh, the head of the Islamic Azad University of iran, Rafsanjani was appointed as the construction assistant director of the Islamic Azad University.
