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
Mir-Hossein Mousavi as well as the conservative newspaper "Jomhouri-e Eslami", supported Mousavi's candidacy, he did not receive the official backing of any major conservative party. His candidacy made it harder for the conservatives to support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and large conservative parties, such as the Combatant Clergy Association, did not back the current President for a second term of office. Mousavi had on numerous occasions indicated his wish to change the constitution in order to remove the existing ban on the private ownership of television stations (currently all Iranian television stations are state-owned), as well as transfer the control of the law-enforcement forces