Khamenei leading Rafsanjani’s funueral.

Fatima Rafsanjani, daughter of former Iranian President and chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said that the reasons behind her father’s death are still ambiguous.

On January 8, Rafsanjani died at the age of 83 after a heart attack, as announced by the Iranian government.

However his daughter Fatima said in an interview with Iranian ISNA news agency that the statements of the Health Minister and several doctors who examined her father “were inaccurate and contradictory.”

Fatima Rafsanjani said that “evidence submitted by the doctors about her father’s death is not convincing and opposed to what she knows.”

She also stressed that her father was in good health before his death and he was examined by an experienced Iranian doctor who lives in the United States.

The Iranian opposition Green Movement supporters stated that Rafsanjani might have been biologically assassinated, due to his recent escalating problems with Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. They claim that there are several signs that prove that Rafsanjani was assassinated and not dead after a heart attack.

Rohollah Zam, who is close to the Green Movement’s leaders, told the Farsi-speaking “Voice of America” radio, that “Rafsanjani was choked underwater in the pool when he went to the gym.”

Mehdi Khozali, son of late Shiite cleric Abul Qasim Khozali, said that doctors have issued a death certificate for Rafsanjani under pressure, adding that the certificate was supposed to be issued by forensics. He also said that Rafsanjani’s family members are under severe security pressures and they are not allowed to be interviewed about their father’s death.

A controversy was raised after the statement of Iranian Health Minister Hassan Qazi Zada Hashemi, where he said that Rafsanjani’s medical team was not with him when his health deteriorated so he was rushed to the hospital but it was too late.”

Reformist Aftab News website revealed that there was a medical malpractice when Rafsanjani has first suffered from the heart attack.

Disregarding the reasons behind the death of the “Iranian political fox” as Rafsanjani was nicknamed, a debate sparked regarding his political legacy between the openness and following reformers in the last two decades and his role in consolidating the pillars of the authoritarian Wilayat al-faqih regime.