Iran's foreign minister on Wednesday threatened artists who drew cartoons mocking the country's supreme leader, promising a "firm response" from Tehran.

A series of cartoons depicting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were published recently in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

They include a turbaned cleric reaching for a hangman's noose as he drowns in blood and Khamenei clinging to a giant throne above the raised fists of protesters. Other images depict more vulgar and sexually explicit scenes. 

"The insulting and indecent act of a French publication in publishing cartoons against religious and political authority will not go without an effective and firm response," Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian wrote on Twitter.

"We will not allow the French government to step over its carpet. They have definitely chosen the wrong path. Earlier, we included this publication in the sanctions list."

Iran on Thursday shut down a decades-old French research institute in response to the cartoons, which the magazine had billed as a show of support for anti-government demonstrations that have convulsed Iran for nearly four months.

On Wednesday, Iran summoned the French ambassador to complain about the cartoons.

Charlie Hebdo has a long history of publishing cartoons mocking Islamists, which critics say are deeply insulting to Muslims. Two French-born al-Qaida extremists attacked the newspaper's office in 2015, killing 12 cartoonists, and it has been the target of other attacks over the years.

Its latest issue features the winners of a recent cartoon contest in which entrants were asked to draw the most offensive caricatures of Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna accused Iran of following "bad politics."

Iran "is not only practicing violence against its own people but is also practicing a policy of keeping people hostage, which is particularly shocking," she said Thursday on LCI television.

"In France, not only does freedom of the press exist — unlike what happens in Iran — it is also exercised under the control of judges and an independent justice system, which is something that Iran undoubtedly knows little about. Also in French law we do not have the notion of blasphemy."

Iran has been gripped by nationwide protests for nearly four months following the death in mid-September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by Iran's morality police for allegedly violating the country's strict Islamic dress code.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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