TEHRAN AND SEATTLE — 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-Hossein Mousavi wrote him a letter and threatened to resign from his high-ranking post, according to news accounts at the time.
"The affairs of Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan are in your hands," Mousavi's 1988 missive reportedly said. "You know better how disastrous these have been to the country."
Mousavi's threat to resign was ignored, but within a year, he was shuffled aside from Iran's political scene, spending the next two decades painting, reading and lecturing at universities.
Today, Mousavi, 67, finds himself again facing off against Khamenei, now the country's supreme leader, as the figurehead of a surprise reform movement 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 favor of incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
As he ascends the international stage, Mousavi, however, is still very much a blank slate. In public, he remains soft-spoken, almost aloof, measuring his words carefully when he speaks, often awkwardly.
Such attributes may have helped him galvanize a diverse group that includes religious conservatives, worried about the creeping militarism and strident nationalism of the Ahmadinejad era, and secular liberals who would like to loosen Iran's social and political restrictions and end its international isolation.
Yet Mousavi's character also leaves his allies, opponents and independent analysts guessing about how far he's willing to go, whether he will ultimately prove more loyal to the system that he helped establish and that molded him or to the followers who have gambled their liberty and even their lives to support him.
Under close supervision of authorities and denied access to state television or a newspaper, Mousavi has managed to occasionally get his message out. According to news accounts, he told those attending the rally Saturday that he was willing to sacrifice his own life to pursue his cause, though his supporters later denied that he had made such a statement.
Mousavi has called on his supporters to declare a national strike if he is arrested. But he also has made it clear that he is no opponent of the Islamic Republic.
