SAEDNEWS: In a candid family portrait, the late Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s eldest daughter recounts his humble morning meals—cheese, honey, nuts and rustic bread—painting an intimate portrait behind the public persona.
According to Saed News, Fatemeh Hashemi Rafsanjani, eldest daughter of Iran’s former president and parliament speaker, has shared vivid memories of her father’s daily routines—starting with breakfast and ending in late‑night study sessions. In an interview with Andisheh Pouya magazine, she recalled that “Papa’s breakfast was always cheese and honey with sangak bread, sometimes enriched with walnut and pistachio kernels, and accompanied by milk. He also loved the local hard breads of Rafsanjan.”
Family breakfasts, she explained, were more than a meal: “My sisters and brothers and I gathered at the table each morning until he left—always exchanging news and political chatter. He’d tease us, asking, ‘Don’t you have breakfast at home?’” Rafsanjani would depart Jamaran at 8:30 a.m. for his duties at the Expediency Discernment Council.
Throughout the day he rarely ate—apart from a piece of fruit or a glass of juice—and often left half of his council‑catered lunch untouched. Fatemeh noted his fondness for fresh lettuce drizzled with pomegranate paste as a light snack. Dinner, she said, was simple: leftover dishes, an egg, or bread with yogurt, cheese and grape molasses.
Evenings, she added, were devoted to reading reports and writing bulletins. Weekends brought extended family gatherings with children, in‑laws and grandchildren, alongside occasional visits from relatives like Seyyed Hassan Khomeini. These anecdotes reveal the disciplined, scholarly side of a man whose public legacy remains hotly debated—but whose personal habits were strikingly modest.
