The daughter of Iran's former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani faces prosecution over social media comments on the Revolutionary Guards and the Prophet Mohammed, the judiciary said Tuesday.
Faezeh Hashemi, 59, is "summoned by the prosecutor over these two affairs," judiciary spokesman Zabihollah Khodayian told a news conference, quoted by the service's Mizan Online website.
Khodayian referred to "remarks by Faezeh Hashemi on sanctions against revolutionary institutions and the insult against the Prophet.”
Hashemi, a former lawmaker and a women's rights activist, contended in mid-April during an audio debate on a social media forum that Iran's demand for the Guards to be removed from a U.S. terror list was "damaging" to the country's "national interests," according to local media.
Removal of the terror designation is a key demand of Tehran in stalled negotiations over restoring its frayed 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
And in a video posted separately on social media, Hashemi said that Khadija, wife of the Prophet Mohammed, was "a businesswoman," but added with a smile that he went on to "waste the money" of his wife.
It was "a joke... without any intention of causing insult," she later pointed out, state news agency IRNA reported.
Hashemi's late father was a moderate who advocated improved ties with the West and the United States.
Hashemi was arrested and sentenced to six months in jail in late 2012 on charges of "propaganda against the Islamic republic.”
