Mehdi Karroubi

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 is of Lur origin, and has a brother named 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. From 1980 to 1992 he was also the director of the Martyr's Foundation, and from 1989 to 1992 he was a Parliament Speaker.

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.

Karroubi has been married to Fatemeh Karroubi, the daughter of an Aligoudarz mercantile family, since she was 14. In February 2026, his son Hossein Karroubi, a reformist political activist, was arrested after being summoned to Tehran's Culture and Media Prosecutor's Office.

Domestic policies

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". In fall of 1989 several radical clerics founded the Association of Combatant Clerics of Tehran, which Karroubi headed. Karroubi eventually left this association in 2005 and founded his own party, Etemad-e-Melli.

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.

House arrest

In the wake of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, Green movement leaders in Iran called for demonstrations on 14 February 2011. The government responded by placing leaders of the movement under house arrest and on 14 February Iranian state TV broadcast images of "some 50 conservative MPs marching through parliament's main hall" chanting "Death to Mousavi, death to Karroubi". A statement issued by conservative Iranian parliamentarians carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency said: "Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi are corrupts on earth and should be tried." "Corrupt on earth" (Mofsed-e-filarz) is a capital crime sometimes levied against political dissidents in the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to reports, Karroubi, fellow Iranian opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and their wives Fatemeh Karroubi and Zahra Rahnavard, were taken from their homes by security forces to Heshmatiyeh Prison in Tehran in February 2011.