Ayatollah Khamenei’s sister condemns his rule, urges Guards to disarm.
According to a letter published by her son in France, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s sister has criticized his crackdown on widespread protests and has called on the widely feared Revolutionary Guards to put down their weapons.
Since the death of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in police detention on September 16, Iran has been plagued by turmoil, and a three-day nationwide strike movement began on Monday.
The letter, dated “December 2022,” says Badri Hosseini Khamenei, who lives in Iran, lambasted the religious establishment from the time of the Islamic Republic’s late founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to her brother’s rule.
“I think it is appropriate now to declare that I oppose my brother’s actions and I express my sympathy with all mothers mourning the crimes of the Islamic Republic, from the time of Khomeini to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khamenei,” she wrote in the letter which was shared on Wednesday by her son Mahmoud Moradkhani’s Twitter account.
“Ali Khamenei’s Revolutionary Guards and mercenaries should lay down their weapons as soon as possible and join the people before it is too late,” the letter said.
The Revolutionary Guards are Iran’s elite military that has assisted the regime in establishing proxies throughout the Middle East and controls a large corporate empire.
Farideh Moradkhani, Khamenei’s activist daughter, was jailed in November after calling on foreign governments to break all ties with Tehran.
