Rumors have begun to circulate in Iranian media that Mohammad Reza Aref, the sole Reformist candidate in the 2013 presidential elections who withdrew in favor of Hassan Rouhani, may emerge as a key Reformist candidate in Iran’s next parliamentary elections in 2016.

These rumors surfaced after former Tehran Mayor Gholam Hossein Karbaschi, the secretary-general of the Construction Party, had suggested that the Reformist groups may reach an agreement to nominate Ali Akbar Nategh-Nuri — a conservative clergyman who served as parliament speaker from 1992 to 2000 and who was reportedly Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s preferred candidate in the 1997 elections — as their lead candidate for the next parliamentary elections.

Karbaschi’s public statements that the Reformists would put their weight behind a traditional conservative candidate in the parliamentary elections served as a litmus test on whether Reformists genuinely feel that they can ever return to power after several setbacks: mass disqualifications during the sixth parliament; a loss in the contested 2009 presidential elections, which brought accusations of vote-rigging; and a near complete boycott of the 2012 parliamentary elections that some Reformists are beginning to consider a “strategic blunder,” given the current parliament’s effort to reign in the moderate president.    

Prominent figures such as former Reformist President Mohammad Khatami did not publicly respond to Karbaschi’s statements about Nategh-Nuri; however, some of those who talked to Al-Monitor didn’t deny the possibility that a conservative such as Nategh-Nuri could lead the Reformists in the next elections.