Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani to Ruhollah Khomeini. This led to the establishment of Expediency Discernment Council, which later he chaired the council. He had an active role in Iran–Contra affair, which was divulged by Mehdi Hashemi and failed. Mehdi Hashemi was executed but Rafsanjani was the loser at internal dimension. In October 1981 presidential election, when he voted to Ali Khamenei, he said it's vote of "Imam (Khomeini), clerics and the parliament". During differences between Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Khamenei, Hashemi cleverly managed to keep the position favor or against these two perspectives and take the middle position. According to Bahman Bakhtiari, at
Hossein Shariatmadari Mir Hossein Mousavi was trying to "escape punishment for murdering innocent people, holding riots, cooperating with foreigners and acting as America's fifth column inside the country" and called for Mousavi and former reformist President Mohammad Khatami to be tried in court for "horrible crimes and treason." In 2009, during the first contested presidential elections, Shariatmadari was announced that Mohammad Khatami would risk the same fate of Benazir Bhutto if he was elected. After the elections, alongside the Green Party protests, Shariatmadari accused Mir Hossein Mousavi of being a fifth column of the US and causing the deaths of many people.