Timeline of the 2009 Iranian election protests the repression and violence which occurred during the election protests. Violent clashes were reported between Iranian police and protesters after a massive protest was held throughout Iran during the Chaharshanbe Suri, over 50 protesters were reported to have been detained. For months prior, large protests had been planned to take place on June 12, the one-year anniversary of the disputed 2009 Iranian Presidential Election. Two days before the planned demonstrations, former presidential candidates and de facto leaders of the Green Movement, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi canceled the protests scheduled for Saturday "in order to protect people's lives and property".
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