Principlists Are Redefining Rowhani’s “Moderation” Standards

As president-elect Hassan Rowhani continues the search for his cabinet, Iran’s conservative hardliners commonly known as principlists too continue to raise new demands from him and provide their own interpretations to the newly elected cleric’s campaign ideas and language.

One idea that Rowhani widely used during his tours and talks was “moderation” which he has also used since his election to convey the message that his cabinet will be made up of individuals based on merit – rather than factional politics – and that he will form an all-encompassing administration.

Many believe that Rowhani’s cabinet will primarily have faces from his close associates in the Strategic Research Center which he headed and some members of the Moderation and Development (Etedal va Tose) Party. These individuals have views close to those of members of Agents of Construction (Kargozaran Sazandeghi) and are among Hashemi Rafsanjani supporters.

These two issues are now the focus of principlists who are interpreting the “moderation” concept for their own purposes. They are also recommending various names to Rowhani as their choice for cabinet members. Rowhani has said that he intended to consider selects individuals who are not affiliated to a particular party or faction.

One indicator of the pressures, and concerns that the principlist have was an editorial published by Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of Kayhan newspaper who is directly appointed by supreme leader Khamenei who is known to be his ardent supporters. In the article he wrote that while the right to select cabinet members was reserved to the newly elected president, he had to exercise caution against seditionists, a term used for supporters of the protests against the official results of the 2009 presidential elections that returned Ahmadinejad to the presidency. He wrote that he should not appoint individuals who had the “treacherous disgrace in the American-Israeli sedition of 2009.”

Another principlist site, Raja news, close to the conservative and right-wing hardline Steadfast Front (Jebhe Paydari) wrote a piece in which the author lauded the choices of Ahmadinejad’s cabinet members and claimed that Ahmadinejad had broken the earlier practice of party-affiliated appointments and had appointed “elite who had higher education university degrees.” The writer called on Rowhani to keep the “high standard” created by Ahmadinejad.

Prior to this, ayatollah Khamenei’s advisor on the Revolutionary Guards force had also echoed similar remarks and had said, “Rowhani had announced in his first press interview that his cabinet would be beyond factionalism and that he would use moderate principlists and moderate reformers.” He said that in the past there had been “factional or party competition for senior government posts but now all national resources should be used.”

But a member of the parliament’s presidium, Mohammad Dehgan went a step further and made a different demand from the president elect. In addition to calling on Rowhani to elect moderate and strong cabinet members who were not affiliated to any political group, he said “one should note that one measure of commitment to the regime is the position of the person regarding the 2009 sedition.”

Speaking on the subject, another senior and influential cleric, Mojtaba Zolnoor, who is the advisor to ayatollah Khamenei’s representatives in the Guards force has also said that those who had supported the 2009 protests in any way should not be viewed to belong to the moderation camp, and thus do not qualify to be members of the cabinet.