[5] After the military coup of 1953, which deposed the government of Mohammad Mossadegh, Yazdi joined the underground National Resistance Movement of Iran, and was active in this organization from 1953 to 1960.

[5] In 1975, Yazdi was tried in absentia in an Iranian military court and condemned to ten years imprisonment, with orders issued for his arrest upon return to Iran.

The opinion of the Revolutionary Council, of which Yazdi was a member, was that these attacks may be aimed at creating chaos and preventing the international recognition of the new regime.

The entire cabinet of the interim government, including Yazdi and Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, resigned in protest the next day.

The embassy takeover is considered to have been motivated in part by an internal struggle between various factions within the revolutionary leadership, with Yazdi and Bazargan on one side, and more radical clergy on the other.

Yazdi was present in the Revolutionary Court in the Alavi School in Tehran and acted as interrogator, prosecutor, and defense lawyer at the same time in cooperation with the judge Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhaali.

[16][17] In contrast to Yazdi, Bazargan supported a general amnesty for all members of the Shah's regime, provided that they cease to act against the revolution.

He publicly opposed the secret trials and the summary executions carried out by the Revolutionary Courts, led by Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhaali.

Bazargan and other members of the interim government may have called for fair and open trials for those in charge of political posts under the Shah.

"[18] After resignation from office, Yazdi and other members of the Freedom Movement of Iran ran in elections for the first post-revolutionary Islamic Consultative Assembly or parliament.

Yazdi, Bazargan, and four other members of the Freedom Movement, namely Mostafa Chamran, Ahmad Sadr, Hashem Sabbaghian, and Yadollah Sahabi, were elected.

These letters and other public statements resulted in the firebombing of Yazdi's residence in Tehran in 1985, and the arrest and imprisonment of several members of the Freedom Movement.

Even after his release, he was barred from leaving the country for many years, and summoned on a regular basis to answer questions before the revolutionary council, with his lawyer, Nobel Prize–winning Shirin Ebadi.

[22] On 17 June 2009, during the 2009 Iranian election protests, it was reported that Yazdi was arrested while undergoing tests at the Tehran hospital according to the Freedom Movement of Iran website.