by Ali Noorani Agence France Presse TEHRAN, Iran (AFP) — Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pugnacious moderate who survived for decades despite challenging his own turbaned elite, died on Sunday after suffering a heart attack. Rafsanjani, who was 82, was a pivotal figure in the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979, and served as president from 1989 to 1997. “Despite the efforts of the doctors he died” at Shohadaa Hospital in northern […]