An Iranian court has charged the daughter of the former Iranian president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, with carrying out propaganda against the regime and blasphemy in social media posts, the Iranian judiciary announced Sunday.
Tehran's Public Prosecutor, Ali Salehi, said that the indictment was issued and referred to the court on charges of "propaganda activity against the system of Iran and blasphemy," according to the judiciary's website Mizan.
The charges relate to supposed comments made by Faezeh Rafsanjani, who is a former lawmaker and women's rights activist, during a radio debate on a social media forum last April.
Local media quoted Faezeh Rafsanjani as saying that Iran's request to remove the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the US list of foreign terrorist organizations is harmful to "national interests."
The official Iranian news agency IRNA later reported that Rafsanjani's daughter had apologized on April 23, saying she was "joking without intending to insult."
Faezeh, 59, is the daughter of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who advocated rapprochement with the West and the US.
The former MP was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison at the end of 2012 on charges of "propaganda against the Republic."
The removal of the Revolutionary Guards from the list of terrorism is one of the tricky demands in the negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Informed sources had recently stated that it is likely that European-mediated efforts to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement will be resumed following the visit of US President Joe Biden to the Middle East this month.
According to Bloomberg, a recent round of talks in Qatar failed to overcome the differences within the framework of the negotiations.
Two European diplomats with direct knowledge of the Doha negotiations said the talks had not made progress, but efforts to restore the deal are expected to continue beyond the July deadline suggested by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
