WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives on Tuesday adopted a resolution supporting anti-government protesters in Iran and condemning the regime’s crackdown on the demonstrations of recent weeks.

Lawmakers backed the measure almost unanimously, by a vote of 415 to two.

The House “stands with the people of Iran that are engaged in legitimate and peaceful protests against an oppressive, corrupt regime,” and condemns the government’s “serious human rights abuses against the Iranian people,” the resolution stated.

“In standing with the Iranian people, we must explain that they are not the target of our sanctions,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce said.

“US sanctions target the oppressive, destabilising regime, not the people of Iran,” he added.

Iran has foiled attempts by its foreign enemies to turn legitimate protests into an insurgency to overthrow the Islamic Republic, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday.

Comments on his Twitter feed and in Iranian media underscored the establishment’s confidence that it has extinguished the unrest that spread to more than 80 cities in which at least 22 people died since late December.

“Once again, the nation tells the US, Britain, and those who seek to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran from abroad that ‘you’ve failed, and you will fail in the future, too’,” Khamenei tweeted.

At least 1,000 people have been arrested in the biggest anti-government protests for nearly a decade, with the judiciary saying ringleaders could face the death penalty.

A judiciary official said on Tuesday that a detainee in Arak, a town about 200km south of Tehran, committed suicide, according to Mizan, the website of the Iranian judiciary.