Last week a video has been uploaded online in which Farideh Moradkhani, one of the granddaughters of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, called on people around the world to put pressure on their governments to “stop all relations with the Iranian regime”. The video has attracted a lot of attention because Khamenei is the most important political and religious figure in Iran and represents the most intransigent part of the regime, the one that does not allow expressions of dissent and criticism of the leadership that governs the country. In the video, Moradkhani complained that the current sanctions imposed against Iran were not enough and argued that Iranians had been left alone in their fight against a regime that “is not loyal to any of the religious principles it follows and does not know no law but force and the maintenance of power at any cost.
Farideh Moradkhani belongs to a branch of the family historically opposed to Iran’s fundamentalist regime and has long been known for her human rights activism. According to her brother Mahmoud, who uploaded her video, the woman was arrested by the Iranian police; she had already been stopped in January for having publicly praised Farah Diba, the widow of the former Iranian shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, deposed with the revolution that in 1979 transformed Iran into an Islamic republic. According to HRANthe news agency run by human rights activists in Iran, since the beginning of the anti-government protests that began in September, more than 18,000 people have been arrested, while at least 450 have died.
