Part 9: Reformists Vs. Conservatives

Once the intellectual foundations of the reform movement had been laid out, it was time to puts these theories to use in the Islamic Republic. The reformists had created a civil society to develop their vision of a new Islamic Republic, but they still had to find a way to implement this vision. The elections at the end of the 1990s would give the reformists an opportunity to capture the elected branches of government and bring change.

Yet the possibility of major change to the regime would upset conservatives who saw a challenge to their dominance and to their belief in an authoritarian regime. The conservatives would launch a campaign to stop the reformists from actually making the changes that they had theorized. Ironically, the thermidor period would set the Islamist coalition on a path towards conflict since the regime would soon not be big enough for the both of them.

Conservatives and liberals Islamists still believed in the Islamic Republic, but their conception of what that meant started to drastically drift. While they would continue to compete for power within the same regime, it would become increasingly difficult for them to peacefully coexist with each other. In place of the Islamist coalition, a new coalition would rise within the regime to challenge the liberal threat made up of conservatives who wanted to create an authoritarian regime.

The election of a little known cleric, Muhammad Khatami, to the presidency of the Islamic Republic in 1997 sent shockwaves throughout Iran and the world. For the first time in its history, a candidate not handpicked by the elite of the regime had reached the highest elected position in the Islamic Republic. Moreover, his election with nearly 70% of the vote demonstrated widespread dissatisfaction with the direction of the regime and its authoritarian tendencies.

Khatami’s election was a triumph for the reform movement and marked the culmination of the thermidor period. The period of moderation after the reign of terror allowed liberal Islamists within the regime to challenge its authoritarian bent through contesting elections. Reformist sweeps in the local elections of 1999 and the 2000 Majlis elections would give further credence to their argument that change could come from within the regime.

Indeed, these relatively free elections along with the victory of opposition candidates seemed to demonstrate that Iran had something approaching one of the few pluralistic governments in the Middle East. The period of 1997 to 2000 marked a period in which the regime allowed unprecedented amounts of competitiveness in the electoral system and this resulted in high levels of participation by the opposition and the overall population. Since it seemed like change could come through elections, the reform movement decided to work within the confines of the regime.

Yet Khatami’s election and other reformist victories set off the inevitable backlash from factions within the regime that feared possible liberalization. As a result, the coalition between liberal and conservative Islamists forged in the 1980s to save the Islamic Republic would become strained leading to its eventual collapse. In its place, a new coalition would emerge composed of traditional conservatives and neo-conservatives united in their goal of defeating the reformists and creating a more authoritarian regime.

The conservatives would strike back by vetoing laws and barring candidates from running in elections to undermine reformist efforts at liberalization. The reformists were unable to deliver on their promise of substantive change and the regime largely maintained its authoritarian bent. The masses who had hoped for real change became disillusioned with the reformists and public participation in elections declined considerably after the regime began its crackdown. Under these conditions, the conservatives were able to regain control of regime culminating with the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

While the hardliners were able to stop internal attempts to change the regime, they could not quell the mass public discontentment that had spurred reformist electoral success. The stage was set for another showdown between liberal and conservative Islamists in the 2009 presidential election leading to the complete collapse of the coalition that had maintained the Islamic Republic for 30 years. This period of reformist electoral success and the conservative backlash marks the beginning of the crackdown that would eventually lead to the creation of a fully authoritarian regime in 2009.