ANKARA (Reuters) - The death of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani deprives Iran's reformers of a powerful ally, boosting anti-Western hardliners before a presidential election which will determine how open Tehran is to the world.
The loss of Rafsanjani's skills as a factional powerbroker also means rivalries in Iran's unwieldy dual system of clerical and republican rule could grow unchecked, testing the stability of the system.
