Iranian President sparks controversy with comment on dissident

President Masoud Pezeshkian infuriated supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Iran's former premier and one of the leaders of the 2009 Green Movement, who accuse him of disrespecting Mousavi.

A video clip posted on social media after Pezeshkian’s first press conference last week has gone viral on social media that shows some media figures confronting Pezeshkian as he was preparing to leave and questioning him about Mousavi, his wife Zahra Rahnavard, and the former Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi.

The three whom hardliners invariably refer to as the “2009 sedition leaders” have been under house arrest since 2011. Speaking about their case, Pezeshkian referred to Mousavi simply as "the other one," failing to utter his name.

“As for the house arrest, Mr. Karroubi’s problem has been solved. We are working on the other one, but the view is, my view is, we need to follow up on this, but the system should not be challenged,” Pezeshkian told them.

Critics say referring to Mousavi as “the other one” was blatant disrespect.

“Someone should remind Mr. Pezeshkian that his name is not “the other one”. His name is Mir-Hossein Mousavi. [He is] the symbol of standing on the people’s side…,” Milad Alavi, a journalist with the reformist Shargh daily tweeted.

Journalist and women’s rights activist Jila Baniyaghoob also took to X to protest. “He is the only Iranian political figure who people [affectionately] called by his first name, Mir-Hossein … He is really one of a kind, a person who has not been matched by anyone, whether amongst the opposition at home or abroad,” she wrote.

Tara, a 48-year-old teacher, voted for Pezeshkian in the runoffs after boycotting the first round and has since been keeping a close eye on his actions. Like everyone else who watched the press conference on TV, she only became aware of Pezeshkian’s remarks after the broadcast through social media and was infuriated.

“More importantly, it is not just ‘the other one’. There is also Rahnavard. It’s very disappointing that Mr. Pezeshkian failed to acknowledge the brave woman who has been enduring house arrest alongside Mousavi all these years,” she told Iran International.

“It was a bad blunder. Pezeshkian should have named Mousavi too or no one at all so he wouldn’t look disrespectful or afraid of getting into trouble with Khamenei over defending Mousavi’s rights,” Hamid, 56, who also voted half-heartedly for Pezeshkian after long discussions with friends and family told Iran International, adding that in his view Pezeshkian’s press conference was very disappointing overall.

Some reformists including prominent journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi have defended Pezeshkian arguing that not referring to Mousavi by name was not meant as disrespect. “He wouldn’t have thrown himself in the minefield if he was so cowardly,” he argued.

Some others like Iranian-Canadian journalist Hossein Derakhshan have argued that Pezeshkian often refers to people by pronouns like “this” or “that”. This, Derakhshan and others say, is normal in Turki, Pezeshkian’s mother tongue, and an indication that he translates from Turki when speaking Persian.

Karroubi’s son Mohammad-Hossein on Tuesday said his father, now 86, was still under house arrest. He had said earlier his father insists that Mousavi and his wife should be simultaneously freed if authorities want to lift his own house arrest.

Karroubi supported Pezeshkian’s bid to presidency in the recent presidential elections, but Mousavi and Rahnavard rejected the ballot box taken to them at their residence although all three had voted in several elections before, including the presidential elections of 2017.

Unlike former President Hassan Rouhani, Pezeshkian has never publicly pledged to convince Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to end the house arrest of the three leaders of the Green Movement. Nevertheless, he did not object when thousands of his supporters chanted Mousavi’s name during one of his campaign meetings.

“Referring to Mousavi as ‘the other one’, even if it was a linguistic and unconscious mistake, is an indication of how sensitive and compelling the ‘Mir-Hossein issue’ and his positions remain, after so many years of house arrest, that Pezeshkian is forced to avoid even mentioning his name,” pro-Mousavi political activist Hosein Naghashi tweeted.

Mousavi who had refrained from openly challenging Khamenei’s authority in 2009 released a short statement entitled “To Save Iran” in February 2023, after the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ protests spread across Iran, to pay homage to the movement and express his vision about the future.

The former premier, now 82, called for a fair and free referendum to determine whether the current constitution, which grants extraordinary powers to the Supreme Leader, should be amended or completely rewritten. He suggested that if necessary, a new constitution should be drafted, and a constitutional assembly formed to decide the future structure of the government, ultimately putting the new constitution to a public vote.

Some reformists who had likewise adhered to the belief that the Islamic Republic was reformable welcomed the more radical positions he outlined in his statement.

Many Iranians have always held Mousavi responsible for much of the wrongdoings and atrocities of the Islamic Republic during his premiership (1981-1989) including the prison purges of 1988 that were ordered by the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini.

Mousavi has never denounced Khomeini who took his side when his differences with Khamenei, then president, developed into constant conflict. There was no mention of Khomeini and his ‘golden era’ in Mousavi’s "To Save Iran" statement .