Iranian principlists

Not to be confused with Principlism.

The Principlists (Persian: اصول‌گرایان, romanized: Osul-Garāyān, lit. 'followers of principles^[9] or fundamentalists^[3][10]'), also interchangeably known as the Iranian Conservatives^[11][12] and formerly referred to as the Right or Right-wing,^[12][13][14] are one of two main political camps in post-revolutionary Iran; the Reformists are the other camp. The term hardliners that some western sources use in the Iranian political context usually refers to the faction,^[15] although the principlist camp also includes more centrist tendencies.^[16] The faction rejects the status quo internationally,^[5] but favors domestic preservation.^[17]

Principlists
Spiritual leader	Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel
Parliamentary leader	Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf
Ideology	Vilayat Faqih Theocracy[1] Islamism[2][3] Factions: Traditionalist conservatism[4][5] Right-wing populism[4] Realpolitik[4] Iranian nationalism[6] Islamic fundamentalism[7]
Political position	Right-wing
Religion	Shia Islam
Executive branch
President	No
Ministers	4 / 19 (21%)
Vice Presidents	1 / 12 (8%)
Parliament
Speaker	Yes
Seats	199 / 290 (69%)
Judicial branch
Chief Justice	Yes
Status	Dominant[8]
Oversight bodies
Assembly of Experts	58 / 88 (66%)
Guardian Council	4 / 12 (33%)
Expediency Council	41 / 48 (85%)
City Councils
Tehran	21 / 21 (100%)
Mashhad	15 / 15 (100%)
Isfahan	13 / 13 (100%)
Shiraz	9 / 13 (69%)
Qom	13 / 13 (100%)
Shiraz	13 / 13 (100%)
Tabriz	6 / 13 (46%)
Yazd	11 / 11 (100%)
Rasht	9 / 11 (82%)
Politics of Iran Political parties Elections

Within Iranian politics, "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.^[18] 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".^[19]

A declaration issued by The Two Societies, which serves as the Principlists' "manifesto", focuses upon loyalty to Islam and the Iranian Revolution, obedience to the Supreme Leader of Iran, and devotion to the principle of Vilayat Faqih.^[20]

The Principlists currently dominate the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Assembly of Experts, as well as non-elective institutions such as the Guardian Council, the Expediency Discernment Council, along with the Judiciary.^[20]

They held the Presidency until the inauguration of Reformist Masoud Pezeshkian on 30 July 2024.^[21]

Demographics

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.^[22]

In April 2021, a joint public opinion survey conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and IranPoll found out that 19% of Iranians identified as Principlist while 7% were leaning Principlist, and if Reformists (21%) and leaning Reformist (10%) were still higher, they also noted that "the support base for the reformists has shrunk by about 8 percentage points since 2017, while the support base for the conservatives has grown by 4 percentage points."^[23]

Factions

• Ultra conservatives—also known as neoconservatives. This grouping is more aggressive and openly confrontational toward the West.^[24] Many ultra or neo Principalists are laymen representing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) collectively.^[24]
• Traditional conservatives are a political faction that helped form the Revolutionary government and can point to personal ties with Ruhollah Khomeini.^[24] These conservatives support the Islamist government and advocate for clerical rule.^[25]
• Deviant current

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	6th
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
2024/1	Saeed Jalili	9,473,298	40.38	2nd
	Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf	3,363,340	14.34	3rd
	Mostafa Pourmohammadi	206,397	0.88	4th
Total		13,043,035	55.60	Runoff
2024/2	Saeed Jalili	13,538,179	45.24	2nd

Parliament

Exclusive seats	Election	+/-
54 / 290 (19%)	2000
196 / 290 (68%)	2004	142
195 / 290 (67%)	2008	1
184 / 290 (63%)	2012	11
86 / 290 (30%)	2016	98
221 / 290 (76%)	2020	135
199 / 290 (69%)	2024	22

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
• Iranian nationalism
• Death to America
• Calls for the destruction of Israel
• Holocaust denial

Notes

References

1. Mohseni, Payam (2016). "Factionalism, Privatization, and the Political economy of regime transformation". In Brumberg, Daniel; Farhi, Farideh (eds.). Power and Change in Iran: Politics of Contention and Conciliation. Indiana Series in Middle East Studies. Indiana University Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0253020680.
2. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi (2013), "Women's Rights, Shari'a Law, and the Secularization of Islam in Iran", International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 26 (3), New York: 237–253, doi:10.1007/s10767-013-9143-x, S2CID 145213603, 'Principlism' or osul-gera'i first appeared in the Iranian political lexicon during the second-term presidency of Mohammad Khatami as an alternative to eslāh-talabi or reformism. Although principlists do not share a uniform political platform, they all believed that the reformist movement would lead the Republic towards secularism. One of the most common elements of their political philosophy is the comprehensiveness of the shari'a. The responsibility of the Islamic state is to determine ways of implementing the mandates of Islam, rather than the reformist project of reinterpreting the shari'a to correspond to the demands of contemporary society.
3. Mehdi Mozaffari (2007), "What is Islamism? History and Definition of a Concept" (PDF), Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8 (1): 17–33, doi:10.1080/14690760601121622, S2CID 9926518, In fact, Iranian 'Islamists' of our day call themselves 'Usul gara', which literally means 'fundamentalist', but in a positive sense. It designates a 'person of principles' who is the 'true Muslim'.
4. 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
5. Robert J. Reardon (2012), Containing Iran: Strategies for Addressing the Iranian Nuclear Challenge, RAND Corporation, pp. 81–82, ISBN 978-0833076373
6. Tait, Robert (18 August 2010). "Iranian President's New 'Religious-Nationalism' Alienates Hard-Line Constituency". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
7. Mehdi Moslem (2002), Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran, Syracuse University Press, p. 135, ISBN 9780815629788
8. "Freedom in the World: Iran", Freedom House, 2017, archived from the original on 17 May 2017, retrieved 25 May 2017
9. Axworthy, Michael (2016), Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic, Oxford University Press, p. 430, ISBN 9780190468965
10. 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 caught on more generally.
11. 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 eshlahgara, or reformist, and is applied to a camp of not necessarily congruous groups and individuals.
12. 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.
13. Haddad Adel, Gholamali; Elmi, Mohammad Jafar; Taromi-Rad, Hassan (2012-08-31). "Jāme'e-ye Rowhāniyyat-e Mobārez". Political Parties: Selected Entries from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam. EWI Press. p. 108. ISBN 9781908433022.
14. Robin B. Wright, ed. (2010), The Iran Primer: Power, Politics, and U.S. Policy, US Institute of Peace Press, p. 37, ISBN 978-1601270849
15. Masoud Kazemzadeh (2008), "Intra-Elite Factionalism and the 2004 Majles Elections in Iran", Middle Eastern Studies, 44 (2): 189–214, doi:10.1080/00263200701874867, S2CID 144111986, 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.
16. Banafsheh Keynoush (2012), "Iran After Ahmadinejad", Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 54 (3), New York: 127–146, doi:10.1080/00396338.2012.690988, S2CID 153661674, What is important, however, is that the principlist camp now increasingly represents not just hard-liners, but also more centre-right factions.
17. Etel Solingen, ed. (2012), Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation, Cambridge University Press, p. 222, ISBN 9781107010444
18. Ladane Nasseri; Kambiz Foroohar; Yeganeh Salehi (June 16, 2013). "Iranians Celebrate Surprise Rohani Win as Reason for Hope". Bloomberg. Retrieved March 10, 2015.
19. Seyed Hossein Mousavian (2012), The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir, Brookings Institution Press, p. 486, ISBN 9780870033025
20. SHAUL, BAKHASH (12 September 2011). "Iran's Conservatives: The Headstrong New Bloc". Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Tehran Bureau. Retrieved March 10, 2015.
21. "Masoud Pezeshkian sworn in as Iranian president". www.nhk.or.jp. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
22. "Poll Results of Popular Leaning Towards Principlists and Reformists", Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) (in Persian), 28 April 2017, retrieved 1 June 2017 – via Khabaronline
23. "Disappointed in Rouhani, Iranians Seek a Different Sort of Leader in June Elections". Chicago Council on Global Affairs. 9 April 2021. Archived from the original on 7 November 2024. According to other IranPoll results, the support base for the reformists has shrunk by about 8 percentage points since 2017, while the support base for the conservatives has grown by 4 percentage points. Still, more Iranians self-identify as a reformist (21%) or leaning reformist (10%) than identify as a "principlist" (19%) or leaning principlist (7%). Four in 10 (43%) have no preference.
24. 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.
25. Thaler; et al. (2010). Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics. Sacramento, CA: RAND Corporation. ISBN 978-0-8330-4773-1.

External links