Seyed Mahmood Hosseini election as one of the reformist candidates from Isfahan, but disqualified by the Council of Guardians. During the protests about the 2009 Iran presidential election, Seyed Mahmood Hosseini signed an open letter to the top Iranian Shia clerics prepared by Mohammad Khatami, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karoubi and some of the renowned reformist figures, by pointing out the arrests after the election, as being the reference and support of the great nation of Iran, to remind the government about the damaging outcomes of their unlawful acts. Hosseini was appointed to Isfahan province governor on August 6, 2002 and held the
2009 Mir-Hossein Mousavi presidential campaign been receiving discouraging messages from "the higher officials", a hint possibly at the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and/or the then President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Mousavi was considered as one of the possible candidates of the reformist alliance to run in the Iranian Presidential election, 2005. However he officially turned down the invitation of a number of parties in the reformist alliance on October 12, 2004, after a meeting with President Mohammad Khatami and the two other high-ranking members of the Association of Combatant Clerics, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohammad Mousavi-Khoiniha. Mousavi ran as an independent Principled Reformist candidate. Although he is