Prime ministership of Mir-Hossein Mousavi Prime ministership of Mir-Hossein Mousavi Khamenei was a key figure in the Islamic revolution in Iran and a close confidant of Ayatollah Khomeini. Khomeini appointed Khamenei to the post of Tehran's Friday prayers in the autumn of 1989, after forced resignation of Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri from the post, when he criticised Khomeini for torture of prisoners. He served briefly as the Deputy Minister for Defence and as a supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. He also went to the battlefield as a representative of the defense commission of the parliament. In June 1981, Khamenei narrowly escaped an assassination attempt
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.