TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — An Iranian news agency says four children of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani are suing a radical lawmaker for describing the influential ex-president’s family as a corrupt “octopus.”

Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, who is a lawyer for Rafsanjani’s family, was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency Wednesday as saying that a complaint has been filed against Hamid Rasai.

Rafsanjani is considered a political centrist. Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection in 2009, in which Rafsanjani supported Ahmadinejad’s reformist challenger, his family has come under pressure from hardliners.

In a speech broadcast on state radio last week, Rasai, who is one of Ahmadinejad’s allies, called one of the ex-president’s sons a “corrupt monster who has always enjoyed iron immunity.”