Iran’s former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was the focus of a 2009 mass protest movement sparked by disputed presidential elections, on Thursday urged the clerical leadership to step down after the “crime” of its deadly crackdown on protests.
“In what language should the people say that they do not want this system and do not believe your lies? Enough is enough. The game is over,” said Mousavi, who has since 2011 been under house arrest, in a statement shared by his Kalame media outlet.
Mousavi claimed to have won the 2009 presidential elections against incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, arguing that the hardliner’s victory was rigged and sparking vast protest rallies in his support known as the Green Movement.
In his statement, Mousavi said the crackdown on protests this month – seen as the biggest such movement in Iran since those 2009 giant rallies – was a “black page in the history of our nation” and a “great betrayal and a crime.”
Rights groups have verified thousands of deaths but fear tens of thousands could have been killed in total by security forces.
Mousavi said Iranians would have “no choice” but to protest again and security forces “will sooner or later refuse to take the burden” of suppressing the movement.
“Put down your gun and step down from power so that the nation itself can lead this land to freedom and prosperity,” he said.
With Washington not ruling out military strikes in the wake of the crackdown, Mousavi said “a constitutional referendum” should be held and also made clear he opposed “foreign intervention.”
Mousavi was prime minister from 1981 to 1989 under the presidency of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who became the Islamic republic’s supreme leader after the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Even in the 80s, Khamenei was long seen as a rival of Mousavi with the then premier regarded as a more moderate figure within the system.
One of few key figures to hold power in the 1980s without being a cleric, Mousavi was the last to serve as premier, a post which was scrapped in Iran’s revised constitution after Khomeini’s death.–AFP
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