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TheReformists (Persian:اصلاحطلبان,romanized: Eslâh-Talabân) are an Islamic liberalpolitical faction in Iran. Iran's "reform era" is sometimes said to have lasted from 1997 to 2005—the length of PresidentMohammad Khatami's two terms in office.[30] TheCouncil for Coordinating the Reforms Front is the main umbrella organization and coalition within the movement; however, there are reformist groups not aligned with the council, such as theReformists Front.Masoud Pezeshkian, a reformist, was elected president following the2024 Iranian presidential election, and was subsequently confirmed by Supreme LeaderAli Khamenei on 28 July.[31][32]
The2nd of Khordad Movement usually refers not only to the coalition of 18 groups and political parties of the reforms front[33] but to anyone else who was a supporter of the 1997 reform programs of Khatami.
The reforms front consists of several political parties, some of the most famous including the following:
Many reformists supportIslamic liberalism[5] andprogressiveIslamist agenda.[26] SomeIranian intellectuals were involved in establishing a foundation for the movement. Perhaps the most influential figure wasAbdolkarim Soroush. For many years, he was the only voice publicly criticizing the regime's policies. His regular lectures at Tehran University used to enjoy the attendance of many of the Iranian students who later generated the 2nd of Khordad movement. Many famous figures of the movement belong to the Soroush circle. However, at the rise of 2nd of Khordad movement,Saeed Hajjarian acted as the main theorist behind the movement and the main strategist inKhatami's camp. According toMahmoud Sadeghi, the dominant [economic] tendency of reformists issocial democracy.[36]
The movement has been described as changing the key terms in public discourse:emperialism (imperialism),mostazafen (poor),jehad (jihad),mojahed (mujahideen),shahed (martyrdom),khish (roots),enqelab (revolution) andGharbzadegi (Western intoxication), to some modern terms and concepts like:demokrasi (democracy),moderniyat (modernity),azadi (liberty),barabari (equality),jam'eh-e madani (civil society),hoquq-e beshar (human rights),mosharekat-e siyasi (political participation),Shahrvandi (citizenship), etc.[37]
The core of the reform movement is said to be made up of Islamic leftists disqualified from running for office as they were purged and generally disempowered by Islamic conservatives following the death of Imam Khomeini in 1989.[38] Islamic leftists turned reformists includeAbdolkarim Soroush,Saeed Hajjarian,Akbar Ganji,Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pur,Ebrahim Asgharzadeh,Mohsen Mirdamadi,Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and theAnjoman-e-Eslami (Islamic Association) andOffice for Strengthening Unity student groups.
Many institutions support the movement of reformation such as organizations like Organization of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution (OMIR) and the Majma’a Rohaneeyoon Mobarez or the Forum of the Militant Clergy, or Office for Fostering Unity and Freedom Movement ofIran. There were also many media outlets in support like the Iran-e-farda and kian magazinez.[39]
Khatami's support is said to have cut across regions and class lines with even some members of theIslamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Qom seminarians[37] andBasij members voting for him.[40] The core of his electoral support, however, came from the modern middle class, college students, women, and urban workers.[37] For example, by 1995, about half of Iran's 60.5 million people were too young to be alive at the time of the Islamic Revolution.[41]
 | Parts of this article (those related to Major Events) need to beupdated. The reason given is:Missing history between 2009 and 2024. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(September 2024) |
The movement began with the May 23, 1997, surprise victory ofMohammad Khatami, "a little known cleric",[42] to the presidency on with almost 70% of the vote.
Khatami is regarded as Iran's firstreformist president, since the focus of his campaign was on therule of law,democracy and the inclusion of all Iranians in the political decision-making process.
Very soon after the rise of the 2nd of Khordad movement, there was an attemptedassassination ofSaeed Hajjarian, the main strategist of the reformist camp. In March 2000, he was shot in the face on the doorstep ofTehran's city council by a gunman who fled on a motorcycle with an accomplice. The bullet entered through his left cheek and lodged in his neck. He was not killed but was "badly paralyzed"[43] for some time. During his coma, groups of young Iranians kept a vigil outside Sina hospital, where he was being treated. Due to this injury, Hajjarian now uses a walking frame, and his voice is distorted.[44][45]
His convicted assailantSaeed Asgar, a young man who was reported to be a member of theBasij militia, served only a small part of his 15-year jail sentence.[43][44]
Red Eminence andGrey Eminences (Persian:عالیجناب سرخپوش و عالیجنابان خاکستری"Alijenabe Sorkhpoosh, Alijenabane Khakestari") is the name of a series ofnewspaper articles and a book written byAkbar Ganji under the responsibility of Saeed Hajjarian, in which he criticized former presidentAkbar Rafsanjani as the "Red Eminence" and the intelligence officers in his government, such asAli Fallahian, as the "Grey Eminences". His subsequent prosecution and conviction for "anti-Islamic activities" for his role in the publication of the book and articles cost Akbar Ganji six years of imprisonment.[46]
Reformist candidates did remarkably well in the 1999 local elections and received 75% of the vote.[47]
The 18th of Tir (July 9) crisis, refers to a demonstration in Tehran University dormitory in reaction to closingSalam newspaper by the government. Demonstrations continued for a few days in most cities in Iran and in more than ninety-five countries worldwide. The demonstration ended in violence and the death of a young Iranian citizen along with many casualties. At the time, it was Iran's biggest antigovernment demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic revolution.After attacking of the students of Tehran University by hardline vigilante group, Khatami delivered a speech three months later while defending of his reform programme and at the same time he insisted on the foundations of his government. He referred to the reformation of system from within with holding two elements of Islamic and republic.[39]
In 2003, Iran's leading pro-democracy student group, theDaftar-e Tahkim-e-Vahdat called for a national day of protest on the 18th of Tir to commemorate the original 1999 protest. At least one observer believes it was the failure of this protest that "delivered a fatal blow to the reform movement."[48]
According to journalistAfshin Molavi, many Iranians hoped the day would lead to an uprising that would "break the back" of the hardliners, but instead the Islamic Republic "employed violence, intimidation, and sophisticated carrot-and-stick approach to suck the wind out of the demonstrations." In addition to a show of force and numerous checkpoints, the state used sophisticated jamming technology to block satellite TV feeds and allowed the holding of (rare) outdoor pop concerts to draw young people away from the demonstrations. Dartar-e Tahkim-e-Vahdat also hurt its cause by calling for foreigners, specifically theUN - to assist it against the government.[49]
In theIranian parliamentary elections, 2000 to elect the 6th parliament, reformist enjoyed a majority (69.25%), or 26.8 million, of the 38.7 million voters who cast ballots in the February 18, 2000 first round. Ultimately reformists won 195 of the 290 Majlis seats in that election.[47]
In January 2004, shortly before the2004 Iranian legislative elections (the 7th Parliament), the conservativeCouncil of Guardians ended Iranian voters' continued support for reformists by banning about 2500 candidates, nearly half of the total, including 80 sitting Parliament deputies. More than 100 MPs resigned in protest and critics complained the move "shattered any pretense of Iranian democracy".[50]
In the27 Khordad presidential election (June 17, 2005),Mostafa Moin andMehdi Karroubi were the main candidates of the 2nd of Khordad movement. However, neither made it to the second round of the election (the final runoff): Moin came in fifth and Karroubi third in the first round. As a result, many supporters of the reform movement lost hope and did not participate in the election.
The two leading reformist candidates in the2009 presidential election wereMir-Hossein Mousavi andMehdi Karroubi. Mousavi supporters disbelieved the election results and initiated a series of protests that lasted several days. After many days of protesting against the election results, the protests eventually turned violent as theBasij (loyal militia to the Islamic Republic) started attacking the protesters and vice versa. Some protesters turned their anger to the government itself and tried to overthrow the Islamic Republic. The protests, in general, lasted up to several months.[35]
Masoud Pezeshkian was elected in a snap election after the death of Iranian PresidentEbrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on 19 May 2024.[51] He secured nearly 16.4 million of the more than 30 million votes cast, beating his main rivalSaeed Jalili, who received approximately 13.5 million in a run-off election, according to the official count.[52] The election was generally seen as an upset victory for the Reformists' faction with many political observers expecting low voter turnout.[52] Pezeshkian is described as a centrist, in stark contrast to his predecessor, Raisi, who was described as a "hard-liner". He has promised several economic, political, and cultural reforms; however, several obstacles remain in the way, primarily Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who retains decision-making authority on all major state issues.[53]
The Reformists' Party often struggles with realizing its agenda as described byThe Economist magazine:
Dozens of newspapers opened during the Khatami period, only for many to be shut down on one pretext or another by the judiciary. Clerics who took advantage of the new atmosphere to question the doctrine ofvelayat-e faqih [Islamic government] were imprisoned or otherwise cowed. Even as political debate blossomed, Iran's security services cracked down on religious and ethnic minorities. A number of the government's critics fell victim tomurders traced later to the interior ministry. In 1999, police reacted to apeaceful demonstration for freer speech by invading Tehran University, beating and arresting hundreds of students and killing at least one. In the Majlis (parliament) much of the president's reforming legislation was vetoed by theCouncil of Guardians, a committee of clerics appointed by thesupreme leader to ensure that laws conform with Islamic precepts.[54]
Saeed Hajjarian, the main theorist behind the movement, declared in 2003 that "the reform movement is dead. Long live the reform movement".[55]
The victory of conservatives in the 2005 presidential election and the 2004 Majlis election can be explained "not so much" by an expansion of "their limited core base as by [their] dividing of the reformers and [their] discouraging them from voting," according to political historianErvand Abrahamian:
The conservatives won in part because they retained their 25% base; in part because they recruited war veterans to run as their candidates; in part because they wooed independents on the issue of national security; but in most part because large numbers of women, college students, and other members of the salaried middle class stayed home. Turnout in the Majles elections fell below 51% - one of the worst since the revolution. In Tehran, it fell to 28%.[56]
The reform movement has been lamented as "too divided to establish its own political authority, too naïve about the tenacity of the authoritarian elite aroundKhamenei, and too inflexible to circumvent the ban on political parties in Iran by creating and sustaining alternative forms of mobilisation."[57] In addition, leaders of the reform movement lacked a clear and coherent strategy of establishing durable and extensive linkages with the public.
Ironically, they became a victim of their electoral successes. The reform movement's "control of both the presidency and parliament from 2000 to 2004 made it look inept and a part of the corrupt system in the eyes of many Iranians."[58]
BBC journalist Jonathan Beale reports that since secularism is banned in Iran, it is an ideology that is mostly followed by political organizations among theIranian diaspora or by many of the anti-sharia political parties in exile that are secular. These parties promote regime change, most often with foreign aid and military intervention (particularity from the United States). He quotes a former leader of theIranian Revolutionary Guards,Mohsen Sazegara (also one of its founders), as saying, "Don't interfere. Leave these affairs to the Iranian people". Sazegara believes the US should call for democracy and freedom, and let Iranian opposition groups inside Iran, which are Reformists, take the lead, instead of attempting to create an opposition in exile.[59]
The Referendum movement calls in effect for a return of the 1979 referendum that established the Islamic Republic in Iran: "a 'yes or no' vote on whether today's Iranians still want the authoritarian Islamic Republic that another generation's revolution brought them." It is said to have been born out of "the ashes of the failures of Khatami's Islamic democracy movement" and reflected in one-wordgraffiti on walls in Tehran saying "no".[60] It has been criticized as calling for complete system change without "building the political and organisational network to back it up" and inviting a brutal crackdown, with "no means on the ground to resist it".[61]
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| Election | Candidate | % | Rank | Party |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997 | Mohammad Khatami | 69.07 | 1st | ACC |
| 2001 | 78.28 | 1st | ||
| 2005 | Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani | 35.93 | 2nd | ECP |
| 2009 | Mir-Hossein Mousavi | 33.75 | 2nd | GPH |
| 2013 | Hassan Rouhani | 50.88 | 1st | MDP |
| 2017 | 57.13 | 1st | ||
| 2021 | Abdolnaser Hemmati | 9.81 | 3rd | ECP |
| 2024 | Masoud Pezeshkian | 54.76 | 1st | IND |
| Election | Seats | ± | % | Rank | Position/Gov. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 222 / 290 |  97 | 76.55% | 1st | Majority |
| 2004 | 47 / 290 |  175 | 16.20% | 2nd | Minority |
| 2008 | 51 / 290 | 4 | 17.58% |  2nd | Opposition |
| 2012 | 22 / 290 | 29 | 7.58% | 3rd | Opposition |
| 2016 | 132 / 290 | 110 | 45.51% | 1st | Minority |
| 2020 | 31 / 290 | 101 | 10.68% | 3rd | Opposition |
| 2024 | 47 / 290 | 16 | 16.20% | 2nd | Minority |
| Election | Seats | +/− | % | Rank | Alliance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | 32 / 86 | 32 | 37.20% | 2nd | ECP |
| 2006 | 29 / 88 | 3 | 32.95% | 2nd | NTP |
| 2016 | 55 / 88 | 26 | 62.50% | 1st | PE |
| 2024 | 1 / 88 | 54 | 1.13% | 3rd | IND |
| Election | Seats | +/− | % | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 579 / 815 | 579 | 71.04% | |||||
| 2003 | No data exists | |||||||
| 2006 | 605 / 1,524 | 26 | 39.69% | |||||
| 2013 | 88 / 479 | 517 | 18.37% | |||||
| 2017 | 165 / 320 | 77 | 51.56% | |||||
| 2021 | No data exists | |||||||
On 8 November 2015, the establishment of the council was announced.[65] It oversees theCouncil for Coordinating the Reforms Front, which its rotating head serves as the deputy head of the council for policymaking.[66]Moderation and Development Party joined the council in April 2017.[67] Some members of the council include:
| # | Name | Tenure | Fraction | Ref | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| From | To | ||||
| 1 | Abdollah Nouri | 1996 | 1997 | Hezbollah Assembly | [72] |
| 2 | Majid Ansari | 1997 | 2000 | [73] | |
| 3 | Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur | 2000 | 2004 | 2nd of Khordad | |
| 4 | Hossein Hashemian | 2004 | 2008 | Imam's Line | |
| 5 | Mohammad Reza Tabesh | 2008 | 2012 | ||
| No reformist parliamentary group between 2012 and 2016 | |||||
| 6 | Mohammad Reza Aref | 2016 | 2020 | Hope | |
| No reformist parliamentary group between 2020 and 2024 | |||||
|
as Conservatives are usually in opposition to Liberals (or in the case of Iran, the Reformists).
Most of the cabinet ministers are not officially affiliated with any political party or group but, nevertheless, have close ties to political figures such as the "Principlist" Speaker of the Parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, moderate conservative former President Hassan Rouhani, and hardliner factions.
Many of the reformist groups which occupied the centre and centre-left of the political spectrum were no less surprised than their opponents by the scale of their victory.
The center-left, self-identified "reformist" faction of the Iranian political elite that claimed leadership of the protestors failed to mobilize popular groups outside of this middle class into a more sustained movement (Maljoo, 2010).
With the help of the armed forces and the judiciary, both constitutionally appointed and overseen by the Supreme Leader, Khamenei began undermining the centre-left, who had rebranded as the 'reform movement' and were quickly liberalising both internal and external policies as well as the economy.
For a president who began his first term in the centre of the Islamic political spectrum, Hassan Fereydoun Rouhani, 68, has now moved firmly to the left, placing himself with the reformists.
The former was the representative of the right wing (Conservatives) and the latter was the birthplace of the left wing (Reformists).
The former was the representative of the right wing (Conservatives) and the latter was the birthplace of the left wing (Reformists). After the 1997 elections, the left wing became known as Reformism while the right wing was introduced as Conservatism after the 2005 elections.
From the early days of the revolution a rift emerged between the conservative (Principlist) and progressive (Reformist) political factions, both of whom were loyal to the constitution of the Islamic Republic.
As mentioned at the end of the last section, a reform era marked by the presidency of Khatami, a progressive Islamist scholar and cleric and an advocate of dynamic jurisprudence, marked a shift in the social and political atmosphere of the country.
On the political spectrum neoconservatives, also sometimes referred to as hard-line conservatives or principlists, are on the far right. Reformists, sometimes called the Islamic left, are the furthest away from the neoconservatives, with pragmatic conservatives falling somewhere in between the two.
During the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), a democratizing push by left-liberal "reformist" movements began to encounter fierce resistance. In the 2004 parliamentary elections, in which many left-liberal candidates were barred from competing, IRGC veterans won at least 16 percent of the seats."
