It is not beyond the realm of the impossible that an overweight, out-of-shape, 82-year-old would have a heart attack and die in the hospital. But, sometimes the conspiracies which surround such occurrences provide significant insight into the society in which such events occur.

According to political activists Mitra Yekta and Goli Ebrahimi, Rafsanjani’s son Mehdi Hashemi addressed the crowd gathered in front of the hospital where Rafsanjani died. He kept screaming “They killed my father” and then explained, “My father had a meeting with a group of IRGC commanders and drank a cup of tea or something that gave him instant heart attack.” He asked for an autopsy but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei vetoed the request. Supposedly, the funeral for Rafsanjani will be in Mashhad instead of the capital Tehran in order avoid any chance for protests in the Iranian capital.

Even if Rafsanjani died of natural causes, the episode is important because it exposes the deep cleavages in Iranian society.

First, there is little trust between the clergy and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which retains its power under President Hassan Rouhani’s regime and, indeed, has only grown more powerful because the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action has enriched it disproportionately in comparison to the rest of Iranian society.

Second, even among the clerical elite—the sons of the important people as they are nicknamed in Persian—there is deep-seeded suspicion about how the regime really operates.

And, lastly, the Islamic Republic remains a regime that is deeply frightened of its own people. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry sometimes suggested that Iranian excesses—‘Death to America’ rallies, for example—should be seen in the context of the Iranian leadership assuaging its masses. That’s simply backward: The Iranian masses largely oppose clerical rule and everyone knows it outside of the White House and Foggy Bottom.