Iranian principlists

Right-wing political faction in Iran From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Principlists (Persian: اصول‌گرایان, romanized: Osul-Garāyān, lit. 'followers of principles,^[28] fundamentalists^[13]^[29]'), also interchangeably known as the Iranian Conservatives^[2]^[3] and formerly referred to as the Right or Right-wing,^[3]^[30]^[31] 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.^[32] The faction rejects the status quo internationally,^[20] but favors domestic preservation.^[33]

Quick facts Principlists, Spiritual leader ...

Principlists
Spiritual leader	Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel
Parliamentary leader	Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf
Preceded by	Traditional Right
Ideology	Theocracy (Iranian)^[1] Conservatism (Iranian)^[6] Anti-Zionism Antisemitism (Iranian)^{[n 1]} Anti-imperialism^[10] Khomeinism^[11] Shia Islamism^[14] Factions: Ultraconservatism^[17]^{[n 2]} Traditionalist conservatism^[21] Right-wing populism^[19] Realpolitik^[19] Iranian nationalism^[22]
Political position	Right-wing to far-right^[26]
Religion	Shia Islam

Executive branch
President	No
Ministers	6 / 19 (32%)
Vice Presidents	1 / 14 (7%)
Parliament
Speaker	Yes
Seats	198 / 290 (68%)
Judicial branch
Chief Justice	Yes
Status	Dominant^[27]
Oversight bodies
Assembly of Experts	59 / 88 (67%)
Guardian Council	6 / 12 (50%)
Expediency Council	38 / 48 (79%)
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

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.^[34]

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."^[35]

Factions

Ultra conservatives—also known as neoconservatives. This grouping is more aggressive and openly confrontational toward the West.^[15] Many ultra- or neo-Principlists are laymen representing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) collectively.^[15]
Traditional conservatives are a political faction that helped form the Revolutionary government and can point to personal ties with Ruhollah Khomeini.^[15] These conservatives support the Islamist government and advocate for clerical rule. (See also: Clericalism in Iran)^[36]
Deviant current are a political faction led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that espouses Islamic populism and Iranian nationalism.

Election results

Presidential elections

More information Year, Candidate(s) ...

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
2009	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
2017	Mostafa Mir-Salim	478,267	1.16	3rd
Total		16,314,061	39.44	Lost
2021	Ebrahim Raisi	18,021,945	72.35	1st
2021	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

More information Exclusive seats, Election ...

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

Notes

[1]
The Principists officially say they are against the "Zionist regime", but they frequently show antisemitic views (including Holocaust denials).^[7]^[8]^[9]
[2]
"Ultraconservatives" are also referred to as "Neoconservatives" or "Neo-fundamentalists".^[18]

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]
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.
[3]
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.
[4]
"Threading the Needle: How President Pezeshkian Could Reshape Iranian Politics". Harvard International Review. 30 December 2024. Retrieved 10 January 2026. His election to the presidency solidified the rule of the Principlist faction of the Iranian parliament, a far-right, conservative coalition that aligns with the hardline positions of Khamenei and supports the original ideological tenets of the 1979 revolution.
[5]
"Iran's political shake-up and Ebrahim Raisi as president". Responsible Statecraft. 23 August 2021. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
[6]
^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]
[7]
Matthias Küntzel (2014). Germany and Iran: From the Aryan Axis to the Nuclear Threshold. Telos Press Publishing.
[8]
Litvak, Meir (2006). "The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism". Journal of Israeli History. 25 (1): 267–284. doi:10.1080/13531040500503029.
[9]
Ali M. Ansari (2007). Iran Under Ahmadinejad: The Politics of Confrontation. Routledge. p. 158.
[10]
Will Atkinson (2025). For a New Political Sociology: The Relational Approach of Pierre Bourdieu. Taylor & Francis. p. 2014.
[11]
M. Mohebi (April 30, 2016). The Formation of Civil Society in Modern Iran: Public Intellectuals and the State. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 130. Principlists are regarded as ultra-conservative, right-wing politicians with a populist approach. Their political ideology has been closely aligned with that of Khomeini.
[12]
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.
[13]
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'.
[14]
^[12]^[13]
[15]
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.
[16]
Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan, ed. (March 22, 2013). Evolving Iran: An Introduction to Politics and Problems in the Islamic Republic. Georgetown University Press. p. 69. 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.
[17]
^[15]^[16]
[18]
Mehdi Moslem (2002), Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran, Syracuse University Press, p. 135, ISBN 9780815629788
[19]
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
[20]
Robert J. Reardon (2012), Containing Iran: Strategies for Addressing the Iranian Nuclear Challenge, RAND Corporation, pp. 81–82, ISBN 978-0833076373
[21]
^[19]^[20]
[22]
Tait, Robert (18 August 2010). "Iranian President's New 'Religious-Nationalism' Alienates Hard-Line Constituency". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
[23]
Matthias Maass, ed. (November 7, 2017). The World Views of the Obama Era: From Hope to Disillusionment. Springer International Publishing. p. 199. ISBN 978-3-319-61076-4. Hardline conservatives or principlists occupy the far right of the Iranian political spectrum. When it comes to foreign policy, hardline conservatives often articulate an anti-Western and anti-American perspective.
[24]
"U.S. Must Be Wary as Iran's Parliament Veers Hard Right". Critical Threats Project. 26 February 2020. Retrieved 10 January 2026. Principlists' victory in the parliamentary elections last Friday is part of a larger shift in Iran's political environment toward the far-right conservative camp.
[25]
"Iran's Moderate Conservatives Might Make A Comeback In 2024". Iran International. 3 April 2022. Retrieved 10 January 2026. Meanwhile, even among the conservatives, there are many voters who would welcome the Larijani-led right-of-center faction to replace the far right "principlists" who currently control the Majles.
[26]
^[4]^[5]^[16]^[23]^[24]^[25]
[27]
"Freedom in the World: Iran", Freedom House, 2017, archived from the original on 17 May 2017, retrieved 25 May 2017
[28]
Axworthy, Michael (2016), Revolutionary Iran: A History of the Islamic Republic, Oxford University Press, p. 430, ISBN 9780190468965
[29]
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.
[30]
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.
[31]
Robin B. Wright, ed. (2010), The Iran Primer: Power, Politics, and U.S. Policy, US Institute of Peace Press, p. 37, ISBN 978-1601270849
[32]
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.
[33]
Etel Solingen, ed. (2012), Sanctions, Statecraft, and Nuclear Proliferation, Cambridge University Press, p. 222, ISBN 9781107010444
[34]
"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
[35]
"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.
[36]
Thaler; et al. (2010). Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics. Sacramento, CA: RAND Corporation. ISBN 978-0-8330-4773-1.
[37]
John Ghazvinian (January 26, 2021). America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 434.