Tehran, June 24: Iran’s economy stood in shambles and its international status was at a nadir. Disturbed by the leadership of then-President Ali Khamenei, Prime Minister Mir Hussain Mousavi wrote him a letter and threatened to resign, according to news accounts at the time.
Today, Mousavi, 67, finds himself again facing off against Khamenei, now the country’s spiritual leader, as the figurehead of a surprise reform movement.
The movement has been built around his own presidential election campaign and the widespread belief among his supporters and independent experts that the June 12 vote count was rigged in favour of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Under close supervision of authorities and denied access to state television or a newspaper, Mousavi has managed to occasionally put his message out.
According to news accounts, he told those attending the rally on Saturday that he was willing to sacrifice his own life to pursue his cause, although his supporters later denied he had made such a statement.
Mousavi has called on his supporters to declare a national strike if he was arrested. However, he also made it clear that he was no opponent of the Islamic Republic.
“We are not against the Islamic system and its laws but against lies and deviations and just want to reform it,” he said on his website.
Mousavi and Khamenei know each other well. Not only did they chafe against each other’s authority frequently during the 1980s, they are relatives, with roots in the northwestern city of Khamein.
They were both part of the Islamic movement that overthrew and replaced Shah Mohammad Rezai Pahlavi. However, they were at odds as leading members of rival factions.
“They had all sorts of problems when Mousavi was prime minister and Khamenei was president,” said Ali Rezai Noori Zadeh, an Iran expert in London. “Almost every day, they were fighting with each other.”
Before the revolution, Mousavi was a follower both of Khomeini and Iranian activist Ali Shariati, who combined Marxist and Islamist doctrine.
However, in the 1990s, Mousavi began expanding his understanding of the world, acquainting himself with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Juergen Habermas and Edward Said, said Saeed Hussainian, a friend who served in his campaign.
“He is an open-minded technocrat with religious ideology,” said Saleh Nikbakht, a Tehran attorney. “Though he admits that he follows the late Khomeini’s path, in fact he belongs to a moderate school with a nationalist democratic legacy and a tolerance of other opinions.”
Although Ahmadinejad fashions himself a populist in support of the poor, Hussainian said Mousavi always leaned toward the left in his outlook. “He believed the poor have suffered more than the others,” he said.
In television appearances, Mousavi told viewers that he re-entered political life because he was worried about the direction Ahmadinejad was taking the country.
He portrayed himself as someone who had been there at the beginning of the revolution and was now prepared to come back into fray to save the nation from economic ruin and international isolation.
He has voiced his commitment to Khomeini’s ideals but also said the revolution needs to resurrect promises of freedom, transparency, rule-of-law and democracy as well as Islam.
Unlike Khatami, who was thwarted in his pursuit to open Iran’s political system, some say he’s a die-hard prepared to go further than mild-mannered clerics.
“I think Mousavi is the man who is more prepared for this fight than Khatami would have been,” Ehteshami said.
However, gusto may not be enough. To take on such powerful adversaries as Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, Mousavi must also have the political savvy to muster up the popular forces and recruit institutional allies, experts say. Khamenei has all those things, unlike Mousavi.
“Mousavi is not a charismatic guy,” said an analyst in Tehran. “He became more and more liked by people as the campaign went on, but more as a symbol of people’s dissatisfaction.”
-Agencies