Support Protests, Iran's Supreme Leader's Nephew Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Calls The World To Break Relations With Tehran

Anti-government protests in Iran. (Wikimedia Commons/Darafsh)

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah's nephew Ali Khamenei, a well-known human rights activist, called on foreign governments to cut all ties with Tehran, due to repressive actions against public protests sparked by the death of young women in moral police custody.

A video of Farideh Moradkhani's statement, an engineer whose late father was a prominent opposition figure and married Khamenei's sister, was shared online after what the HRANA activist news agency said was his arrest on November 23.

"O free people, be with us and tell your government to stop supporting this regime of child killers and killers," Moradkhani said in the video.

"This regime is not loyal to one of the principles of its religion and does not recognize any rules, except coercion and defending power," he continued.

Khamenei's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

HRANA said, as of November 26, about 450 protesters had been killed in more than two months of national unrest, including 63 minors.

In addition, it said 60 members of the security forces had been killed with 18,173 protesters detained.

The protests, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini after her arrest for "unsuitable use", pose one of the strongest challenges to the country's clerical stance since the 1979 Revolution.

Jalal Mahmoudzadeh, a lawmaker from the city of Mahabad with a majority Kurdish said on Sunday, 105 people died in Kurdish-populated areas during the protests. He spoke in a debate in parliament as quoted from the Entekhan website.

Against the legitimacy of the ruling government, protesters from all walks of life have burned photos of Khamenei and called for the fall of Iran's Shia theocracy.

The video was shared on YouTube on Friday by his older brother, France-based Mahmoud Moradkhani, featuring himself as a "opposist" on his Twitter account, and later by Iran's leading human rights activist.

On November 23, Mahmoud Moradkhani reported the arrest of his sister when he heeded a court order to appear at Tehran's prosecutor's office. Farideh was arrested earlier this year by Iran's Intelligence Ministry and later released on bail.

HRANA said he was in the security prison of Evin Tehran. Moradkhani, he said, had previously faced a 15-year prison sentence on unspecified charges.

His father, Ali Moradkhani Charcoeh, was a Shiitehnese cleric who married Khamenei's sister and recently died in Tehran after years of isolation due to his attitude towards the government, according to his website.

Farideh Moradkhani added in his video: "Now is the time for all free and democratic countries to recall their representatives from Iran, as a symbolic sign and to expel representatives of this brutal regime from their country."

On Thursday, the United Nations human rights agency decided to form a new investigative mission to investigate Tehran's security crackdown on anti-government protests.

It is known that criticism of the Tehran government by relatives of high-ranking officials was unprecedented. In 2012, Faezeh Hashermi Rafsanjani, daughter of the late former president Akbar Hasemi Rafsanjani, was sentenced to prison for "anti-state propaganda".