Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Mir-Hossein Mousavi

Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khameneh (Persian: میرحسین موسوی خامنه‎, Mīr-Hoseyn Mūsavī Khāmené; Azerbaijani: میرحسین موسوی, Mir Hüseyn Musəvi; born 2 March 1942) is an Iranian reformist politician, artist and architect who served as the seventy-ninth and last Prime Minister of Iran from 1981 to 1989. He was a reformist candidate for the 2009 presidential election and eventually the leader of the opposition in the post-election unrest. Mousavi served as the president of the Iranian Academy of Arts until 2009, when Conservative authorities removed him.

In the early years of the revolution, Mousavi was the editor-in-chief of Jomhouri-e Eslami, the official newspaper of the Islamic Republican Party, before being elevated to Minister of Foreign Affairs and eventually the post of Prime Minister. He was the last Prime Minister in Iran before the 1989 constitutional changes which removed the post of prime minister; he then went into semi-retirement for the next 20 years. He remains a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and the High Council of Cultural Revolution. However, he has not participated in their meetings for years, which is interpreted by political analysts and commentators as a sign of his disapproval.

For the 2009 Iranian Presidential election, Mousavi came out of semi-retirement and ran as one of two Reformist candidates against the administration of incumbent President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However he failed to win the election, and following alleged vote rigging and manipulation, his campaign sparked a long protest that eventually turned into a national movement against the Government and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Despite the violent crackdown, he remains the leader of the Green Movement but his movements have remained severely restricted. He chose green as his campaign color, a color which is pervasive in Iran. He is currently under house arrest along with his wife and Mehdi Karroubi.