Iranian Principlists

Short description: Right-wing political faction in Iran

Principlists

Parliamentary leader| Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf
Factions:
Traditionalism[1][2]
Populism[1]
Pragmatism[1]
Fundamentalism[3]
Political position| Right-wing
Religion| Shia Islam
Executive branch
President| Yes
Ministers|

18 / 19 (95%)

Vice Presidents|

10 / 10 (100%)

Parliament
Speaker| Yes
Seats|

240 / 290 (83%)

Judicial branch
Chief Justice| Yes
Status| Dominant[4]
Oversight bodies
Assembly of Experts|

66 / 88 (75%)

Guardian Council| Dominant[4]
Expediency Council| Dominant[5]
City Councils
Tehran|

21 / 21 (100%)

Mashhad|

15 / 15 (100%)

Isfahan|

13 / 13 (100%)

Karaj|

9 / 13 (69%)

Qom|

13 / 13 (100%)

Shiraz|

13 / 13 (100%)

Tabriz|

6 / 13 (46%)

Yazd|

11 / 11 (100%)

Rasht|

9 / 11 (82%)

The Principlists (Persian: اصول‌گرایان, romanized: Osul-Garāyān, lit. followers of principles[6] or fundamentalists[7][8]), also interchangeably known as the Iranian Conservatives[9][10] and formerly referred to as the Right or Right-wing,[10][11][12] are one of two main political camps inside post-revolutionary Iran, the other being Reformists. The term hardliners that some western sources use in the Iranian political context usually refers to the faction,[13] although the principlist camp also includes more centrist tendencies.[14]

The camp rejects the status quo internationally,[2] but tends to preserve it domestically.[15]

Within Iranian politics, a principlist refers to the conservative supporters of the Supreme Leader of Iran and advocates for protecting the ideological 'principles' of the Islamic Revolution’s early days.[16] According to Hossein Mousavian, "The Principlists constitute the main right-wing/conservative political movement in Iran. They are more religiously oriented and more closely affiliated with the Qom-based clerical establishment than their moderate and reformist rivals".[17]

A declaration issued by The Two Societies, which serves as the Principlists "manifesto", focuses on loyalty to Islam and the Iranian Revolution, obedience to the Supreme Leader of Iran, and devotion to the principle of Vilayat Faqih.[18]

According to a poll conducted by the Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) in April 2017, 15% of Iranians identify as leaning Principlist. In comparison, 28% identify as leaning Reformist.[19]

The Principlists currently dominate the Assembly of Experts as well as non-elective institutions such as the Guardian Council, Expediency Discernment Council and the Judiciary.[18]

## Contents

* 1 Factions
* 2 Election results
* 2.1 Presidential elections
* 3 Parties and organizations
* 3.1 Alliances
* 4 Media
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links

## Factions

* Ultra conservatives—also known as neoconservatives—consists of laymen representing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) collectively.[20] These conservatives support the Islamist government and are more aggressive and openly confrontational toward the West.[20]
* Traditional conservatives are a political faction that helped form the Revolutionary government and can point to personal ties with Ruhollah Khomeini.[20] These conservatives support the Islamist government and advocate for clerical rule.[21]

## Election results

### Presidential elections

Year  | Candidate(s)  | Votes  | %  | Rank

|
|
|
|

1997  | Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri  | 7,248,317  | 24.87  | 2nd
2001  | Ahmad Tavakkoli  | 4,387,112  | 15.58  | 2nd
2005/1 | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | 5,711,696  | 19.43  | 2nd
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf  | 4,095,827  | 13.93  | 4th
Ali Larijani  | 1,713,810  | 5.83  | 5th
Total | 11,521,333 | 39.19 | Runoff
2005/2  | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | 17,284,782  | 61.69  | 1st
2009 | Mahmoud Ahmadinejad | 24,527,516  | 62.63  | 1st
Mohsen Rezaee  | 678,240  | 1.73  | 3rd
Total | 25,205,756 | 64.36 | Won
2013 | Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf  | 6,077,292  | 16.56  | 2nd
Saeed Jalili  | 4,168,946  | 11.36  | 3rd
Mohsen Rezaee  | 3,884,412  | 10.58  | 4th
Ali Akbar Velayati  | 2,268,753  | 6.18  | 6th
Total | 16,399,403 | 44.68 | Lost
2017 | Ebrahim Raisi  | 15,835,794  | 38.28  | 2nd
Mostafa Mir-Salim  | 478,267  | 1.16  | 3rd
Total | 16,314,061 | 39.44 | Lost
2021 | Ebrahim Raisi  | 18,021,945  | 72.35  | 1st
Mohsen Rezaee  | 3,440,835  | 13.81  | 2nd
Total | 21,462,780 | 86.16 | Won

## Parties and organizations

* Society of Pathseekers of the Islamic Revolution
* Association of Islamic Revolution Loyalists
* Fadayeen of Islam Society
* Ansar-e Hezbollah
* Front of Islamic Revolution Stability
* Resistance Front of Islamic Iran
* Progress and Justice Population of Islamic Iran
* Modern Thinkers Party of Islamic Iran
* YEKTA Front
* Green Party

* Combatant Clergy Association
* Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom
* Islamic Coalition Party
* Islamic Society of Engineers
* Islamic Association of Physicians of Iran
* Islamic Society of Students
* Islamic Society of Employees
* Islamic Society of Athletes
* Zeynab Society
* Society of Devotees of the Islamic Revolution
* Development and Justice Party

|

### Alliances

* The Two Societies (Unofficial)
* Front of Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader (founded in the 1990s)
* Coordination Council of Islamic Revolution Forces (founded 2000)
* Front of Transformationalist Principlists (founded 2005)
* Resistance Front of Islamic Iran (founded 2011)
* Popular Front of Islamic Revolution Forces (founded 2016)

Electoral

* Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran (2003, 2004)
* Coalition of Iran's Independent Volunteers (2004)
* Coalition of the Pleasant Scent of Servitude (2006)
* Principlists Pervasive Coalition (2008)
* United Front of Principlists (2008, 2012)
* Insight and Islamic Awakening Front (2012)
* Principlists Grand Coalition (2016)
* Service list (2017)

## Media

* Kayhan
* Resalat
* Vatan-e-Emrooz
* Abrar
* Yalasarat
* Partow-e Sokhan
* Rajanews

## See also

* Islamic fundamentalism in Iran

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Melody Mohebi (2014), The Formation of Civil Society in Modern Iran: Public Intellectuals and the State, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 129–131, ISBN 978-1-137-40110-6
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Robert J. Reardon (2012), Containing Iran: Strategies for Addressing the Iranian Nuclear Challenge, RAND Corporation, pp. 81–82, ISBN 978-0833076373
3. ↑ Mehdi Moslem (2002), Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran, Syracuse University Press, pp. 135, ISBN 9780815629788
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Freedom in the World: Iran", Freedom House, 2017, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2017/iran, retrieved 25 May 2017
5. ↑ "Iran conservatives tighten grip on top oversight body", Agence France-Presse (Yahoo), 14 August 2017, https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-conservatives-tighten-grip-top-oversight-body-084811330.html, retrieved 14 August 2017
6. ↑ Axworthy, Michael (2016), Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic, Oxford University Press, p. 430, ISBN 9780190468965
7. ↑ Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; no text was provided for refs named `Islamism`
8. ↑ Kevan Harris (2017). A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran. Univ of California Press. p. 157. ISBN 9780520280816. "This discourse was eventually tagged with the Persian neologism osulgarāi, a word that can be translated into English as “fundamentalist,” since "osul" means “doctrine,” “root,” or “tenet.” According to several Iranian journalists, state-funded media were aware of the negative connotation of this particular word in Western countries. Preferring not to be lumped in with Sunni Salafism, the English-language media in Iran opted to use the term “principlist,” which cought on more generally."
9. ↑ Said Amir Arjomand; Nathan J. Brown (2013). The Rule of Law, Islam, and Constitutional Politics in Egypt and Iran. SUNY Press. p. 150. ISBN 978-1-4384-4597-7. "“Conservative” is no longer a preferred term in Iranian political discourse. Usulgara', which can be clumsily translated as “principlist” is the term now used to refer to an array of forces that previously identified themselves as conservative, fundamentalist, neo-fundamentalist, or traditionalist. It developed to counter the term eslahgara, or reformist, and is applied to a camp of not necessarily congrous groups and individuals."
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Randjbar-Daemi, Siavush (2012). "Glossary of the most commonly-used Persian terms and abbreviations". Intra-State Relations in the Islamic Republic of Iran: The Presidency and the Struggle for Political Authority, 1989-2009 (Ph.D. thesis). Martin, Vanessa (Supervisor). Royal Holloway, University of London. p. 11. Open access material licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
11. ↑ Haddad Adel, Gholamali; Elmi, Mohammad Jafar; Taromi-Rad, Hassan (2012-08-31). Political Parties: Selected Entries from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam. EWI Press. pp. 108. ISBN 9781908433022.
12. ↑ Robin B. Wright, ed. (2010), The Iran Primer: Power, Politics, and U.S. Policy, US Institute of Peace Press, p. 37, ISBN 978-1601270849
13. ↑ Masoud Kazemzadeh (2008), "Intra-Elite Factionalism and the 2004 Majles Elections in Iran", Middle Eastern Studies 44 (2): 189–214, doi:10.1080/00263200701874867, "In Western sources, the term ‘hard-liners’ is used to refer to the faction under the leadership of Supreme Leader Ali Khamanehi. Members of this group prefer to call themselves ‘Osul-gara’. The word ‘osul’ (plural of asl) means ‘fundamentals’, or ‘principles’ or ‘tenets’, and the verbal suffix ‘-gara’ means ‘those who uphold or promote’. The more radical elements in the hard-line camp prefer to call themselves ‘Ommat Hezbollah’. ‘Ommat’ is a technical Arabic-Islamic term referring to people who are Muslim. ‘Hezbollah’ literally means ‘Party of Allah’. Before the rise of Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2005, many official sources in the Islamic Republic referred to this group as ‘mohafezeh-kar’ (‘conservative’). Between 1997 and 2006, many Iranians inside Iran used the terms ‘eqtedar-gara’ (authoritarian) and ‘tamamiyat-khah’ (totalitarian) for what many Western observers have termed ‘hard-liners’. Members of the reformist faction of the fundamentalist oligarchy called the hard-liners ‘eqtedar-gara’."
14. ↑ Banafsheh Keynoush (2012), "Iran after Ahmadinejad", Survival: Global Politics and Strategy (New York) 54 (3): 127–146, doi:10.1080/00396338.2012.690988, "What is important, however, is that the principlist camp now increasingly represents not just hardliners but also more centre-right factions."
15. ↑ Etel Solingen, ed. (2012), Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation, Cambridge University Press, pp. 222, ISBN 9781107010444
16. ↑ "Iranians Celebrate Surprise Rohani Win as Reason for Hope". Bloomberg News. June 16, 2013. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-15/rohani-clinches-iran-presidency-in-surprise-victory.
17. ↑ Seyed Hossein Mousavian (2012), The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir, Brookings Institution Press, p. 486, ISBN 9780870033025
18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 SHAUL, BAKHASH (12 September 2011). "Iran's Conservatives: The Headstrong New Bloc". Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Tehran Bureau. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2011/09/irans-conservatives-the-headstrong-new-bloc.html.
19. ↑ "Poll Results of Popular Leaning Towards Principlists and Reformists" (in fa), Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA), 28 April 2017, http://www.khabaronline.ir/detail/659410/Politics/election, retrieved 1 June 2017
20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Sherrill, Clifton (2011). "After Khamenei: Who Will Succeed Iran's Supreme Leader?". Orbis 55 (4): 631–47. doi:10.1016/j.orbis.2011.07.002.
21. ↑ Thaler (2010). Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics. Sacramento, CA: RAND Corporation. ISBN 978-0-8330-4773-1.

## External links

*[lit.]: literal translation