Mir-Hossein Moussavi, Iran’s leftist prime minister between 1981 and 1989, is a leading candidate to unseat president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad in the presidential election on June 12. The FT’s Tehran correspondent Najmeh Bozorgmehr interviewed him on April 12 in his office at the Art Centre in central Tehran. The 18-minute interview was in Farsi. The edited transcript, translated by Monavar Khalaj, follows:

Financial Times: You recently said you would pursue détente with the west if you were elected. How are you going to have that approach with the US while not compromising on the nuclear programme?