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Grand Ayatollah Sayed Kazim Shariatmadari "He favoured the traditional Shiite practice of keeping clerics away from governmental positions and was a critic of Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, denouncing the taking hostage of diplomats at the US embassy in Tehran. In 1982 he was accused of being part of a plot to bomb Khomeini's home and to overthrow the Islamic republic, and he remained under house arrest until his death in 1986. His followers also opposed Ruhollah Khomeini." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Kazem_Shariatmadari Grand Ayatollah Ahmad Khonsari "he was a staunch opponent of the Shah’s White Revolution in 1963. But he felt Khomeini’s direct challenge of the Shah, claiming to speak for the entirety of Iranian religious leadership, went too far. Khonsari openly criticized Khomeini’s behaviour. Khonsari was a quietist, who believed the clergy should not exercise political power. As such, he opposed Ayatollah Khomeini’s interpretation of the concept of velayat-e faqih." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Khonsari Grand Ayatollah Sayed Hassan Tabatabaei Qomi " He has repeatedly criticized the velayat-e faqih, and because of his critique, the Iranian government, beginning with Ruhollah Khomeini, placed him under house arrest from 1984 until his death in 2007" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_Tabatabaei_Qomi Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad al-Husayni al-Shirazi "Amnesty International reports that in Iran: several followers of Grand Ayatollah Sayed Mohammad Shirazi were detained during [1998]. In January Sheikh Mohammad Amin Ghafoori, a well-known religious figure and writer, his wife, and Sayed Hossein Fali were arrested in Qom. There were reports that they were beaten during arrest and tortured in detention. Sayed Hossein Fali was reported to have been released in June. Sheikh Mohammad Amin Ghafoori was said to have been sentenced in July to two and a half years' imprisonment by the Special Court for the Clergy, whose procedures fell far short of international standards. In October, five other followers of Grand Ayatollah Shirazi, including Reza Sultani, were reported to have been arrested and they remained held incommunicado at the end of the year. Sheikh Sadiq Za'eemiyan has also been harassed. After many years of being under the house arrest, Grand Ayatollah Shirazi died on Monday, December 17, 2001 in Qom" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_al-Shirazi Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Sadiq al-Husayni al-Shirazi "Most accusations made against al-Shirazi are a result of his independence and criticism of Iran's ruling establishment. On March 6, 2018, his son, Hussein was arrested reportedly by the IRGC as he appeared at the Special Clerical Court. He was prosecuted after a lecture comparing Iran's government—the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist (velayat-e faqih)—to a regime of "pharaohs". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadiq_al-Shirazi Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad-Sadiq Husayni Rohani "Rohani was one of the first senior clerics to be placed under house arrest under direct order from grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini just a few years after the Iranian revolution. Rohani remains a critic of the Iranian government today." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Sadeq_Rouhani Grand Ayatollah Yousef Saanei "A day after the funeral procession of Montazeri, around 1,000 members of Iran's Basij militia and "plainclothes men" attacked offices of Saanei in the central shrine city of Qom, a reformist website reported on 22 December 2009. The plainclothes militiamen broke the windows of Saanei's office and insulted him and his staff and also beat up his staff.They also put up posters of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who has been a staunch defender of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial June re-election and who ordered a post-election crackdown on opposition protests. Police sided with the militia and prevented Saanei's supporters from defending his office, the website said. Whether he was a Marja' (Grand Ayatollah) was disputed. His calls for radical political reform in Iran were very controversial and in 2010 the government-sponsored "Qom Theological Lecturers Association" (Jame-e-Modarressin) declared him no longer qualified for emulation as a Grand Ayatollah." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yousef_Saanei Grand Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri "He was one of the leaders of the Iranian Revolution and one of the highest-ranking authorities in Shīʿite Islam. He was once the designated successor to the revolution's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, but they had a falling-out in 1989 over government policies that Montazeri claimed infringed on people's freedom and denied them their rights. Montazeri spent his later years in Qom and remained politically influential in Iran, but was placed in house arrest in 1997 for questioning "the unaccountable rule exercised by the supreme leader", Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in his stead. He was known as the most knowledgeable senior Islamic scholar in Iran and a grand marja (religious authority) of Shia Islam. Ayatollah Montazeri was said to be one of Khamenei's teachers." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein-Ali_Montazeri Grand Ayatollah Yasubeddin Rastegar Jooybari "He has repeatedly been arrested for his opposition against the current Iranian government, in particular Supreme Leader Khamenei.Khamenei's elevation to supreme leader was challenged by him. During his arrest in late February 1996, he was held in incommunicado detention, reportedly mainly in Tawhid and Evin Prisons in Tehran until July 1996. In August 1996, he was sentenced to three years imprisonment for having held a mourning ceremony for the late Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari. He was sentenced by the Special Clerical Court after a summary trial on vaguely worded charges, in which he had no access to a lawyer.[8] Ayatollah Rastgari was released from prison in December 1996, but immediately afterwards was placed under house arrest in Qom. Rastgari was again arrested on April 27, 2004 and sentenced by the Special Clerical Court to four years in prison for “insulting Islam” and “causing schism” through his critical book on Sunni-Shia relations, The Reality of Religious Unity. He has reportedly been tortured while in detention and is held incommunicado without access to his family His two sons were arrested with him at the time. After publishing Rastgari's book "The Reality of Religious Unity," the book's publisher was shut down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasubedin_Rastegar_Jooybari Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Taher bin Abdul-hameed bin Isa bin Hasan bin Shubayr bin Thiab bin Mohammed bin Harb al-Khaqani "He was a leading Iranian Arab Shia cleric from Ahwaz.Khaqani was imprisoned after the 1979 Revolution in Iran for his opposition to the velayat-e faqih and his promotion of autonomy for the Ahwazi Arabs of Iran's Khuzestan province. The Grand Ayatollah died in suspicious circumstances in 1986 while under house arrest in Qom." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad-Taher_Shubayr_al-Khaqani Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani "Rafsanjani died in 2017, following a heart attack, in a hospital in Tehran at the age of 82. Although government officials attributed his death to cardiac arrest, his sudden death prompted speculation that he had been assassinated. His family strongly asserted that he had been murdered. Further investigation revealed that his body was highly radioactive" Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Kamal al-Haydari ? Not sure if he was placed under house arrest or not, or why. Since there is so much information, I tried to copy and paste the most significant from the wikipedia links, but obviously I didn't get it all. Additionally, I would want to point out that Wikipedia is not always the best source of information, particularly when it originates from the East. This makes me wonder how many people have been placed under house arrest, died unexpectedly, or vanished without a trace. I'm sure I've missed a lot. Do you know of any other Ayatullahs or prominent religious or political figures that were placed under house arrest, disappeared, or died mysteriously? Comment below.