Eli Lake provides some more background on Mousavi in the new issue of TNR:
True, Mir Hossein Mousavi and the people directly surrounding him are known quantities in the U.S. intelligence community. Both Mousavi and his most powerful ally during the campaign, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were key interlocutors in the Iran-Contra affair. (It was Mousavi’s office–working through a deputy named Mohsen Kangarlu–that arranged the details of the exchange of TOW missiles for the release of American hostages kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon.) We also know that Mousavi was a strong supporter of Iran’s modern nuclear program. In 2007, Tehran handed over documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency showing that Mousavi approved a decision to purchase centrifuge technology from A.Q. Khan’s clandestine black market in 1987. Meanwhile, the Mousavi campaign’s head of “voter protection” is Ali Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, who is generally credited with helping to found Hezbollah. During the Lebanon war, he lost his right hand when he opened a book on Shia holy places laden with explosives.
Geez, I wonder who would put explosives inside a book on Shia holy places. As far as Mousavi’s history of terrorism, this would have been deeply troubling had he been elected as president, but in the event, there is little to lose by giving Mousavi the benefit of the doubt — that his role as the figurehead for a mass uprising against the regime may have changed his view of the revolution, its support for terrorism, and its hostility towards the United States, if not its nuclear program.
