The Rise and Decline of the Iranian Hardliners: Why Ahmadinejad’s Group Shifted from Power to Opposition

This paper analyses the political parabola of the Iranian hardliners behind the leadership of Mahmood Ahmadinejad with a historical approach. It will investigate the rise in power of Ahmadinejad’s circle by identifying his electoral campaign, as well as his political narrative and relations with the other political factions. Moreover, the paper will analyse economic reforms and trace the guidelines of Ahmadinejad’s foreign policy to provide a comprehensive insight into his political agenda. The paper aims to identify the path of hardliners from being the peak of the political power to the subsequent marginalization that led them to stand as the opposition. It will therefore examine the roots behind this shift and the legacy left by the hardliners’ political experience in the factional competition. The hardliners entered the Iranian political scene between 2003 and 2005. Domestic politics was experiencing an ongoing clash between conservatives and reformists, a heterogeneous front that had been able to intercept the demand for more openings from students’ circles and the urban middle-class. The reformist president, Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005), was in his last term and the Dovvom-e Khordad (as the reformist front is generally referred to in Iran) was exhausted by the constant marginalization and repression of its members by unelected institutions. In Iran, these constitutional bodies, such as the Guardian Council, the Expediency Council, and the judiciary, have always epitomised the most conservative expression of the system. They are linked to the office of the Supreme Leader, whose authority derives from the principle of Velayat-e faqih. Reformists had tried to change not only the social aspects, providing more openings to individual liberties, civil society, minorities, women and young people; they had also resumed the debate on political Islam initiated in the nineties by religious intellectuals. However, the ambitious project