In May 2016, the Reformist Hope faction participated in its first intra-parliamentary vote, for speaker, a few months after its overwhelming victory in legislative elections. Mohammad Reza Aref, head of the List of Hope, a coalition of Reformists and moderates supporting President Hassan Rouhani, lost his bid for the speakership. Instead, Ali Larijani, the conservative who had long held the post, was re-elected with 173 votes to Aref’s 103.

Aref’s allies, however, won two deputy speakership positions, with Masoud Pezeskhian, representing Tabriz, becoming first vice speaker, and Ali Motahari, a moderate conservative, becoming second vice speaker. For political analysts, the vote set the record straight in terms of the political weight that each group rightly wielded in the legislature.

The Reformists appeared to accept Larijani as parliament speaker after the 2016 vote, but as this year’s intra-parliamentary elections drew near in late May, rumors began to circulate about Aref again entering the race against Larijani. The reports surprised everyone, including the Reformists, who were themselves critical of Aref’s performance in parliament. In their opinion, he had been too quiet and a failure as the Reformists’ parliamentary leader. Why then did the Reformists decide to challenge Larijani in 2018?

The move appears to have been related to what had been speculation about a possible coalition of Reformists and hard-liners. The hard-liners, the smallest faction in the parliament, were pushed to the sidelines in 2016. Larijani, however, could not maintain his grip on parliament’s top post without their support. The hard-liners therefore presumably decided to form an odd and unexpected coalition with their Reformist rivals behind the scenes.