Farideh Moradkhani () is an Iranian engineer and human rights activist. She is a niece of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

Mordkhani has been detained multiple times, including a January 2022 arrest which sent her to section 209 of Evin Prison, possibly due to praising the ousted pre-revolutionary empress Farah Diba and suggesting she be allowed to return to Iran. Mordkhani was subsequently released on bail.

Farideh Moradkhani

On 23 November 2022, Mordkhani was arrested after going to a prosecutor's office following a summons.

Farideh Moradkhani

On 25 November 2022, her France-based brother Mahmoud Moradkhani shared a video, in which she called on foreign governments to cut all links with Tehran's "murderous and child-killing" regime, and stated: "This regime is not loyal to any of its religious principles and does not know any laws or rules except force and maintaining its power in any possible way". She also criticized what she described as the inaction of the United Nations, that in front of "obvious and cruel oppression of the Iranian people" issued ″only a few expressions of regret and short and ineffective statements″.

Farideh Moradkhani

Family

Farideh Moradkhani's mother, Badri Hosseini Khamenei, is the estranged sister of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Farideh's father, Ali Tehrani, was a prominent opposition figure who died in October 2022.

Her brother Mahmoud Moradkhani is based in France and was the one who shared both Ms Moradkhani's video criticizing the regime and their mother's criticism of the regime in December 2022.

See also

Detainees of the Mahsa Amini protests

References

Living people

Iranian human rights activists

Prisoners and detainees of Iran

Mahsa Amini protests

Ali Khamenei

21st-century Iranian women

Date of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people)