[1] In contrast to the other maraji of his time, who lived in the holy cities of Qom or Najaf, he was based in Tehran,[2] where he ran his own hawza.

Grand Ayatollah Khonsari came to Qom in 1923 and became one of the leaders of the hawza after the death of Abdul-Karim Ha'eri Yazdi.

Together with Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari and a number of other Iranian Grand Ayatollahs, he was a staunch opponent of the Shah's White Revolution in 1963.

[4] But he felt Khomeini's direct challenge of the Shah, claiming to speak for the entirety of Iranian religious leadership, went too far.

Therefore, he said to his treating doctors: "Whenever I am busy reciting Al-An'am Surah, you should perform the surgery, I am paying attention to the Quran, and in this case, no problem will arise."