Will Iranian Reformists decide to once again support a moderate-conservative as their candidate in the 2021 presidential elections? This is a question that has come to occupy the minds of observers as a rare scene in a ceremony captured the attention of Iranian media outlets, leading Reformists to think more about their choices when President Hassan Rouhani’s second term ends.

On Sept. 22, moderate parliament Speaker Ali Larijani was seen sitting next to former Reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who is under a media ban, and talking with him seriously — a scene that did not slip through the fingers of photographers and was captured and then released to the media.

In the 2009 presidential elections, hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was announced the winner, but Reformist candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi claimed that the ballot was rigged, leading protests that ultimately caused them to end up under house arrest, where they have been since 2011. Khatami sided with Mousavi and Karroubi during the protests and has called for their release.

In the years after the contested re-election of Ahmadinejad, hard-liners branded the protests as the “2009 sedition,” and Khatami was condemned and censured by them as a seditionist along with Mousavi and Karroubi. Meanwhile, the political establishment lost its trust in the Reformists and Khatami, resulting gradually in the judiciary imposing a media blackout on Khatami.