Zahra Rahnavard ( Persian : زهرا رهنورد ; born Zohreh Kazemi ; 19 August 1945) is an Iranian academic, artist and politician . Rahnavard is a university professor , artist, and intellectual who was under house arrest from February 2011 to May 2018. In 2009, Foreign Policy magazine named her one of the world's most distinguished thinkers. She is the wife of former Iran Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi . In part of her work, she has underlined the need for men to respect the laws of the hijab in the same way as women, as well as a general activist for women's rights in the Middle East .