"We are not against the Islamic system and its laws," he said in a statement that appeared on his website at the end of Saturday's clashes between security forces and protesters, "but against lies and deviations and just want to reform it."
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Mir-Hossein Mousavi's unusual career arc
Some wonder how far Iran's opposition leader is willing to go. They note that as premier, he was sidelined by his inability to play factional politics. Backers say he is an open-minded technocrat.
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A long history
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 Reza Pahlavi and the monarchy. But 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 Reza Nourizadeh, an Iran expert in London. "Almost every day, they were fighting with each other."
As prime minister from 1981 to 1989, Mousavi is generally credited for steering the country well during the years of war with Iraq, but some recall an unpredictable character unable to navigate the system and defeat his adversaries in Iran's hard-knuckle factional politics.
"In his domestic policy he was not able to manage his own Cabinet let alone his foreign policy," said Mohammed Esmaeel Haydari, a journalist. "Every single member of his Cabinet was linked to one faction of power and all of them were taking orders from [then-supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] and did not care what the prime minister said. In the war-stricken country he was a puppet whose strings were pulled by the clerical establishment. He was, in fact, a front for them."
After the tumult of the revolution's early years, Khamenei succeeded Khomeini as supreme leader, consolidating his power as he mastered the intricacies of Iran's unique political system, which combines elements of a theocracy with that of a republic. He balanced faction against faction, cleric against cleric, cultivating ties with the military and winning the loyalty of the informal pro-government militias. By most accounts, his outlook also became more conservative.
Meanwhile, out of power, Mousavi reinvented himself, spending his two decades out of the political maelstrom studying and teaching at Tarbiat Modares University in Tehran, and then in 1998, taking over the presidency of the newly created Academy of Arts.
