09 January, 2017
Another presidential comeback bid was snuffed out by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's surprise victory in 2005 elections, which left Mr Rafsanjani and his powerful clan as fierce critics of Mr Ahmadinejad.
While Rafsanjani's power diminished noticeably in recent years, he continued to enjoy a final post as chief of the Expediency Council, assigned to seemingly resolve disputes between the Guardian Council and parliament.
His candidature was controversially rejected on the basis of his age.
"All the people of the revolution, all conservatives and moderates have come once again to the Imam Khomeini's mosque and they got together to show that Hashemi was at the centre of unifying this country", said one woman.
The following year he delivered crucial support for the eventual victor, Hassan Rouhani, a moderate with whom he had a warm rapport.
Ayatollah Rafsanjani had "this principle of equidistance from the superpowers that translated into both the West and the East", the analyst said. A crowd reportedly gathered at the hospital after the announcement.
Known for his persuasive role in shaping the regime's politics following the 1979 revolution, Rafsanjani will leave a power vacuum in his wake.
While Rafsanjani, during his first four years as president, was more influential than Khamenei, that dynamic would eventually reverse. He was a supporter of the Iran's nuclear deal with the world powers, a stance which did not sit well with the hardliners.
Yet in related story, Islamic Republic of Iran's Army also offered condolences to the nation and state as well; "the death of a reliable figure and a bedrock of the system and the Revolution was a great loss for the nation and his demise will be mourned; a figure of vast perseverance, Hashemi Rafsanjani had several golden pages in his book of history and in different bottlenecks of the Revolutionary era", the Army statement read.
Rafsanjani joined with the reformers in 2009 when hardliner Ahmadinejad was re-elected as the president. His daughter, Faezeh Hashemi, attracted the ire of hardliners when she met a leader of the Bahai religious minority - which Iran's leadership regards as a heretical sect - past year.
Rafsanjani - a portly man with only sparse and wispy chin hairs in contrast to the full beards worn by most Islamic clerics in Iran - first met Khomeini in the Shiite seminaries of Qom in the 1950s and later became a key figure in the Islamic uprising that toppled the US -backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979.
Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani was among the main aides to late founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini. He was also credited with leading the country out of a bloody eight-year war with neighbouring Iraq.
After the loss of Hashemi, I know of no other personality, with whom I had such a common experience over such a long period through thin and thick of this history-making period.
He advocated progressive economic policies, encouraging private businesses and improving infrastructure. He favored a free-market economy and called for privatization of state-owned industries, winning praise from the country's moneyed elite, who saw him as an extension of their own business interests, but he was never popular with the urban poor and residents of rural districts.
State-run television announced that he had died "after a lifetime of fighting and constant efforts in line with fulfilling the goals of Islam and the revolution".
