Will Iran’s Reformists ‘hire’ a candidate for presidency?
In its struggle against all of the odds, Iran’s Reform movement says it is learning lessons from the past to avoid losing its last trench of power in the June presidential election.
The more radical sectors of Iran’s embattled Reform movement say past experience has taught them not to “hire a candidate” from outside their tribe for the June presidential election.
The concept of “the hired candidate” made its way into Iran’s political discourse with the pro-Reform movement’s endorsement of Hassan Rouhani in 2013 and later for his reelection in 2017. To many members of the camp, that was a choice in reluctance between a lesser of two evils. In their view, Rouhani had never expressed allegiance to their fundamental tenets of genuine reform in the Islamic Republic.
