Hassan Lahouti is the 23-year-old son of Faezeh Hashemi, Rafsanjani’s most politically active child. She was a member of the Majlis in the 1990s and has promoted women’s sports for many years.
In the past nine months, she has been a vocal supporter of the opposition-and many in Iran suspected her son was arrested to intimidate his mother. The authorities have frequently summoned the relatives of its opponents in recent months in what has become a very clear effort to coerce those opponents into silence.
Lahouti himself has reportedly been in school in London since days after the protests first erupted, so he likely did not have had a role in them. A family member who spoke to Lahouti in prison said he had not been officially charged, but was told by his interrogators that he was arrested for insulting the Supreme Leader during telephone calls to his family in Iran. That was the same as telling the family that its phones are tapped. It also broke ground by saying that even private remarks criticizing the Supreme Leader are punishable offenses.
Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi said Lahouti was freed on bail of $73,000 after “expressing remorse.” Dolatabadi did not say what Lahouti expressed remorse for. He said Lahouti’s case had been referred to court for further investigation, but he did not say what the charges were.
Three days before Lahuti’s arrest at Imam Khomeini airport, Rafsanjani’s brother-in-law, Hossain Marashi, was picked up and sent to prison. Marashi has been very active politically in the Executives of Construction Party, which was founded two decades ago to push for Rafsanjani’s open market economic reforms. Marashi was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison some months ago but only placed in prison last week, in what some saw as further intimidation of the Rafsanjani clan.
In the last several weeks, however, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi has repeatedly gone out of his way to show support and affection for Rafsanjani, signaling to one and all that efforts to have him neutered politically and expelled from the leadership do not have the Leader’s support-and are, in fact, opposed by the Leader.
The attacks on Rafsanjani’s relatives may, therefore, be a kind of backlash by Rafsanjani-haters and a protest against the Leader’s support for Rafsanjani.
And Lahouti’s quick release may also reflect the Leader’s intervention.
The most intense anger toward a member of the clan is reserved for Mehdi Hashemi, one of Rafsanjani’s son, who led a ballot security effort last June aimed at preventing, or at least catching, any ballot fraud. A large proportion of the ballot monitors recruited and trained by Mehdi were simply locked out of the polling places.
Regime supporters say Mehdi had a major role in organizing the first protests after the June 12 balloting. Soon after those accusations arose, Mehdi flew to London and has not returned. Rafsanjani said his son had gone to Britain to study for a doctorate, suggesting he would not return for a few years.
