In an extensive interview, the prominent Reformist Abbas Abdi challenged a number of common perceptions and beliefs regarding Reformists and the administration of President Hassan Rouhani, criticizing the former for their ineffectiveness and lack of cooperation with conservatives. He drew the praise of conservative websites for his observations. Abdi’s most controversial comments to the Reformist newspaper Etemaad, in a Nowruz special edition, concerned the 2005 and 2009 elections.

“The legacy of [former President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad was not just a product [created] by him,” Abdi said. “Others provided the ground for this. Whether it was in the 2005 elections or 2009, unwise policies of others resulted in this dangerous situation. That we want to blame Ahmadinejad for everything only proves our passivity and ineffectiveness.” Abdi further contended that if the Reformists think they had nothing to do with the Ahmadinejad moment in Iran's history, then they must admit that they are “weak and ineffective.”

Abdi explained, “The problem of the country is not the Ahmadinejads, the problem is the Reformists who have to let eight years pass before they can confess to the mistake of 2005 and still will not say if it was a tactical or strategic mistake. And in another four years, they will talk about their mistakes in 2009, and another eight years about their mistakes in 2013.”

Abdi contends that the Reformists made a mistake in 2005 by not uniting their forces behind a candidate, thus paving the way for Ahmadinejad to take power. As for the 2009 balloting, Abdi believes there was electoral infringement on a small scale that would not have altered the reality of an Ahmadinejad victory, rather than electoral fraud, as many Reformists insist. This is a controversial position given that the 2009 protests, followed by a government crackdown, were based on alleged election fraud on a massive scale to keep Ahmadinejad in power.