BEIRUT, LEBANON (8:00 P.M.) – Faiza Rafsanjani, the daughter of the late Iranian President, Hashemi Rafsanjani, said that “Iran’s intervention in Syria has left 500,000 people dead,” noting that her father opposed Iran’s participation in the war in Syria.
Rafsanjani said that her father, who was head of the Expediency Council (after the end of his presidential term), opposed Iran’s participation in the war in Syria, and informed the former commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard, Major General Qassem Soleimani, since the beginning of the crisis in Syria.
“Soleimani consulted my father before he went to Syria, and my father told him not to go,” Rafsanjani said in an interview with Ensaf News.
She continued: “On the anniversary of Soleimani’s assassination, we do not hear anyone talking about what he did, but my father was intelligent and farsighted, and he advised him not to go, and he was right.”
The former member of Parliament asked: “What did Soleimani’s actions and our resistance policy produce? What did they achieve for us in the fields of economy, freedoms and foreign policy?”
Rafsanjani criticized Iran’s policy in the region, saying that it “led to us losing our friends, and our foreign policy became similar to domestic politics, as supporters turned into critics, then critics changed into opponents.”
Her brother, Mohsen Hashemi Rafsanjani, who is the mayor of Tehran’s council, demanded an apology from her, while stating that “Trump did nothing but impose sanctions, assassinations and insults against Iran. Apologize for what you wrote, and do not discredit your father.”
Rafsanjani’s criticism of Qassem Soleimani sparked an ire on Twitter, as activist Ibrahim Soltanian said, “Faiza Rafsanjani should be sold to ISIS, in order for Soleimani to realize the great achievement that Soleimani has achieved.”
Faiza Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former reformist and parliamentary figure, was sentenced in 2011 to a six-month suspended prison sentence and banned for five years from engaging in political, cultural and journalistic activities, after she was charged with propaganda activities against the government.
