Mr. Rafsanjani, a former president, is one of the founders of the revolution, but he has come under increasing pressure for his veiled support of the opposition.
He said they had been interpreted by BBC staff as a veiled threat and "another bit of pressure".
However, the Russian government slowed down work on Bushehr this year over what it said was a payment dispute, but which was widely seen as a veiled effort to add to the pressure on Iran to halt enrichment.
The verbal pressure is often accompanied by veiled warnings about the welfare of family members in Pakistan, they said.
He has also, through the not-so-veiled threat of cross-border ground operations, put pressure on the Pakistani Army to pursue militants in the tribal areas even as the army has continued to struggle with relief from the catastrophic floods this summer.
Facebook will sponsor the Republican and Democratic national conventions this summer providing "financial and other support" – despite pressure from progressive organizations and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's own veiled criticisms of presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric.
After exerting heavy diplomatic pressure for the Union not to start the case, and after veiled threats to retaliate, the initial Chinese response Thursday was comparatively restrained.
General Sonthi's recent comment that he could not guarantee Mr Thaksin's safety if he returned did sound like a veiled threat.A constitution-writing body set up by the junta has, under public pressure, cut the most undemocratic bits of a draft charter that it will soon put to a referendum.
And the report was produced under a cloud of external pressure by, among others, UC regent Richard Blum, who publicly issued a veiled threat: "My wife, and your senior senator" — Dianne Feinstein — "is prepared to be critical of this university," unless UC finds a way to punish the supposed new form of anti-Semitism.
It has now banned both the veiled question gay candidates dreaded—"is there anything in your past that could embarrass the party?"—and pressure to parade a spouse as proof of soundness.
But the start of her political problems can be traced to her thesis at the University of Havana, "Words Under Pressure: A Study of the Literature of Dictatorship in Latin America," which was seen as containing veiled criticisms of Fidel Castro's rule and praised writers she admires but who have had work banned, like the Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa.
