After reports that opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi became ill and needed medical care, four Iranian parliamentarians requested to visit the former parliament speaker who has been under house arrest since 2011.

According to Tehran parliament member Ahmad Mazani, a member of the Reformist Central Council of Hope, the parliament members felt that visiting Karroubi would be “in the interests of the country.” Karroubi, along with Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, were put under house arrest for challenging the outcome of the 2009 presidential election. Mousavi was prime minister during the 1980s. Their call for street protests against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election brought about the country’s biggest internal crisis since the post-revolutionary era.

Mazani said, “A lot of time has passed since the environment of 2009, and we have to create an environment … that continues the path of win-win of 2013 [President Hassan Rouhani’s election].” He called on the judiciary and Rouhani, as head of the Supreme National Security Council, to help secure the meeting in order to resolve differences about their house arrest. He added that a few parliament members had held meetings with those who can help, though he did not say whom.

Mazani said that parliamentarians represent the people and that during the last two elections people had expressed hope to see the issues of the house arrests come to an end. During the 2013 election, Rouhani was very vocal about his calls to end the house arrests of Mousavi and Karroubi. Though it has never been stated explicitly, it is believed Rouhani had made attempts to mediate a release, though both Mousavi and Karroubi refused to repent or promise to cease their protests. In May 2017, a reporter asked Rouhani why he has never spoken transparently about the issue of the house arrests or the efforts for their release. He replied with a vague answer about references to the law and his ill-fated Citizens’ Rights Charter.