Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran ائتلاف آبادگران ایران اسلامی | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Spokesperson | Mehdi Chamran[1] |
| Head of Election Campaign | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad(2003)[2] Hossein Fadaei(2004)[3] |
| President of Iran | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad |
| Speaker of the Parliament | Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel |
| Founded | 2003 (2003) |
| Succeeded by | |
| Headquarters | Tehran,Iran |
| Ideology | Iranian neoconservatism[4] Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist[4] Revivalism[5] Populism[6] |
| Political position | Right-wing[4] |
| Religion | Islam |
| National affiliation | Coordination Council of Islamic Revolution Forces[3] |
| Slogan |
|
| 2003 local election(Tehran) | 14 / 15 (93%) |
| 2004 parliament election(Tehran) | 29 / 30 (97%) |
| Website | |
| www | |
TheAlliance of Builders[4] orDevelopers[6] of Islamic Iran (Persian:ائتلاف آبادگران ایران اسلامی;E'telāf-e Ābādgarān-e Īrān-e Eslāmī), usually shortened toAbadgaran (Persian:آبادگران), was anIranianconservativepolitical federation of parties and organizations. Described as "Iran'sneocons",[4] main groups within the alliance wereFront of Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader members andSociety of Devotees of the Islamic Revolution.
According to theColumbia World Dictionary of Islamism, the Abadgaran "seems to have been formed in 2003 and is made up broadly of figures under the age of fifty, who are non-clerics".[4] The group originally consisted ofBasij andRevolutionary Guards veterans who rose to mid- and senior-level administrative positions but marginalized duringgovernment of Hashemi Rafsanjani.[7]
The alliance, mostly active inTehran, won almost all ofTehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr's seats in theIranian Majlis election of 2004 and the2003 Iranian City and Village Councils elections.[4]Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former mayor of Tehran (who was chosen by the Abadgaran–dominatedTehran City Council) was considered one of the main figures in the alliance and won the2005 presidential election backed by the group. The victory could be said to have put to an end a long period of infighting within theIslamic Republic followed by death ofAyatollah Khomeini in 1989.[4]
Embracingsocial justice with a promise to recreate theutopian "original revolutionary spirit at the battlefields oftheSacred Defence",[8] develop a "renewed and truly revolutionary Islamic Republic" for the people[5] and “guardingthe revolution and the independence of the country”,[9] they aimed to crush thereformists as a political force, a process began by reducing power of then–PresidentMohammad Khatami.[4] Controlling the parliament's majority, they soon enacted laws that madeforeign investment difficult and hamperedKhatami administration's efforts to negotiate with international companies. On theNuclear program of Iran, they refused to ratify theAdditional Protocol thatHassan Rouhani had negotiated withEU-3. They also demanded to pull out of theNon-Proliferation Treaty, an action which was not permitted byAyatollah Khamenei.[10]
The group's name, reflects its focus on the issue ofdevelopment to present them as a rival to the rulingreformist economic policies.[11]Fred Halliday states that the nameDevelopers has an implicit contrast with the title ofExecutives of Construction, and suggests that it is closer to people and the poor than the latter group, since it conveys a sense of rural roots and values (Abadi means village in Persian).[6]Michael Axworthy believes that the name was an "awkward choice", as it sounds like it was selected because the terms for 'reforms' (Eslahat) and 'construction' (Sazandegi) were already taken.[2]
Political historianErvand Abrahamian credits the victory of Abadgaran and other conservatives in the 2003, 2004, and 2005 elections to the conservatives' retention of their core base of 25% of the voting population, their recruiting of war veteran candidates, their wooing of independents using the issue of national security, and most of all "because large numbers of women, college students, and other members of the salaried middle class" who make up the reformists' base of support "stayed home". Turnout in the 2004 Majlis election fell below 51%, for example.[12]
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)| Preceded by | Principlists parliamentary coalition 2004 | Succeeded by |
