Before his post as prime minister, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is also a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and the High Council of Cultural Revolution. He has not attended their meetings for years. Political analysts think that he does not like these councils. In the early years of the revolution, Mousavi was the editor-in-chief of the official newspaper of the Islamic Republican Party, the "Jomhouri-e Eslami" (Islamic Republic) newspaper. In 2009 presidential election, Mousavi chose green as his campaign color, a color which has since become common in Iran.