Iranian newspapers were summoned to court for publishing extracts from a written interview that Ayatollah HosseinAliMontazeri , Iran's most senior dissident, long under house arrest, had given a British newspaper.
In the 1980s, the movement's members made common cause with Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, considered at the time to be the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's heir, when he criticised the conduct of the war against Iraq.