Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met with university students July 2. During the five-hour meeting, he addressed the students and later answered questions. In Iran, these Q&A sessions provide an opportunity for students to make longer statements of political positions couched as questions.

One of the questions that received a great deal of attention in the Persian-language media pertained indirectly to the fate of the Green Movement leaders who have been under house arrest for over five years without formal charges.

A picture of Mohammad Ali Kamfirouzi, there as a representative of the managers of student publications, standing behind a stage to the left of Khamenei was shared widely on social media. Kamfirouzi asked about the denial of some Iranians of their basic legal rights. Kamfirouzi’s statements about “attributing lies and insults” to former government officials without offering them the opportunity to respond due to “illegal limitations” were widely covered.

Kamfirouzi, whose father was killed in the Iran-Iraq War, said also that many people like him who are committed to the revolution distinguish the Islamic Republic from reactionary Islamic governments in the region by how it interacts with its critics. Kamfirouzi concluded his statement by asking Khamenei to “please explain in what way [the government] should deal with me and people like me,” who have criticism of the government.