Mehdi Karroubi

Mehdi Karroubi (, born 26 September 1937) is an Iranian Shia cleric and reformist politician leading the National Trust Party.

Mehdi Karroubi is born on 26 September 1937 into a Shia clerical family in Aligudarz, a city in the western part of Lorestan province.

He has a brother, Hassan.

Karroubi studied theology and Islamic studies at seminaries in Qom and Tehran.

He studied under notable figures such as Hossein-Ali Montazeri and Ruhollah Khomeini.

Karroubi was promoted to Mujtahid on the recommendation of the Grand Ayatollah Yousef Sanei and others.

He also studied theology and law at Tehran University.

In 1962, he became a lawyer in economy, dealing with the investments of prominent businessmen in Iran.

Karroubi was imprisoned several times by the government of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, during the 1970s, including a stint at the Qasr Prison in Tehran.

His wife, Fatemeh, later recalled that she took their second son, Taghi, to meet his father at Qasr Prison for the first time when he was six months old.

In 1978, Karroubi retired from law in order to commit to politics.

In 1979, he joined the Iranian Revolution.

Karroubi was the head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee and the Martyr's Foundation shortly after Iranian revolution.

In 1988, Karroubi re-entered business after 10 years of emphasis on politics.

With eighteen years of experience as a solicitor beforehand, Karroubi began trading and investing himself.

During his first term as speaker of Parliament, Karroubi was among the maktabi or "radical" faction of the majlis who contested the policies of President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

While Rafsanjani favored foreign investment and market reforms, Karroubi and others "sought to promote mass political participation and maintain state control of the economy".

He was the speaker of the parliament from 1989 to 1992 and 2000 to 2004, and a presidential candidate in the 2005 and 2009 presidential elections.

He has been described as a "moderate" with a "mostly rural" base of support.

Karroubi considers himself a pragmatic reformist and now is one of the leaders of the Iranian Green Movement.

He is a founding member and former secretary-general of the Association of Combatant Clerics party.

Karroubi is a critic of the Guardian Council and Iran's Judicial System.

In fall of 1989 several radical clerics founded the Association of Combatant Clerics of Tehran, which Karroubi headed.

His wife, Fatemeh, served as his social affairs advisors when he served as the chairman of the Majlis of Iran from 2000 until 2004.

Mehdi Karroubi, an ethnic Lur, supports an approach where all people regardless of their gender, religion, or ethnicity can feel that they are part of Iranian government.

He was outspoken in supporting the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

He visited churches, synagogues and Zoroastrian temples during his time as speaker of Parliament.

Karroubi is a critic of the Guardian Council and on numerous occasions wrote letters to the council expressing his concerns.

He criticized the nature of the Guardian Council's supervision over the elections.

Karroubi and the National Trust Party support the idea of dialogue with the United States aiming at resolving long standing conflicts.

Early after the election of Barack Obama as US president, Karroubi stated that the changes from the United States have been positive.

Karroubi has been a critic of President Ahmadinejad's foreign policy and his infamous remarks about the Holocaust.

Karroubi said: "The Holocaust is an event which did take place."

He believes that the president's remarks cost Iran a great deal.

By appointment of the Supreme Leader, he was a member of the Expediency Discernment Council and an adviser, posts he held until resigning from all his posts on 15 June 2005 after the first round of the 2005 presidential election.

Karroubi eventually left this association in 2005 and founded his own party, Etemad-e-Melli.

Karroubi was among the reformist candidates in the presidential election of 2005, where he finished third in the vote count, closely following the front runners, ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

As neither gathered a majority of the vote, a run-off election was held on 24 June 2005, and won by Ahmadinejad.

Following 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, Karroubi was put under house arrest in February 2011 – reportedly ordered by the Supreme Leader of Iran – without officially being charged, although he is accused of being a "seditionist" and "traitor".

As of 2021, he is still confined to his house.