Liberalism in Iran
'The South') was printed in Tehran and usually criticized Bakhtiaris,[1] and held the view that Iranian government does not understand the importance of the Persian Gulf region.
[8][9][10] Many constitutionalist veterans were associated with the party, including Mohammad Ali Foroughi, Mostowfi ol-Mamalek, Hassan Taqizadeh, Mohammad-Taqi Bahar and Ebrahim Hakimi.
[11] The party had also liberal and nationalist tendencies and supported Reza Khan and helped him become the new Shah of Iran while holding majority in the parliament.
[10][12] The party's platform was based on "separation of religion and politics, creating a strong army, an efficient administrative system, to end the economic rates, industrialize Iran, instead of replacing domestic investment of foreign capital into the agricultural tribes, development of the income tax system, educational facilities to the public, including women, opportunities for the flourishing of talents, and throughout the promotion of Persian language instead of local languages".
[14][16] Amidst Iranian Revolution, the front supported the replacement of the old monarchy by an Islamic Republic and was the main symbol of "nationalist" tendency in the early years of post-revolutionary government.
[28] Many Iranians regard Mosaddegh as the leading champion of secular democracy and resistance to foreign domination in Iran's modern history.
[31] Established in 1949, the Iran Party is described as the "backbone of the National Front", the leading umbrella organization of Iranian nationalists.
[40] It was suppressed following the British–American backed coup d'état in 1953[7] and was outlawed in 1957, on the grounds that it had an alliance with the Tudeh Party of Iran ten years earlier.
[50] Prominent members are Mehdi Bazargan, Ebrahim Yazdi, Mostafa Chamran, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and Ali Shariati.
He resigned his position as prime minister in November 1979, in protest of the US Embassy takeover and as an acknowledgement of his government's failure in preventing it.
[57][58] In the immediate aftermath of the revolution Bazargan led a faction that opposed the Revolutionary Council dominated by the Islamic Republican Party and personalities such as Ayatollah Mohammad Hossein Beheshti.
[60] During the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that overthrew shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the liberal-left National Democratic Front was founded by Hedayatollah Matin-Daftari, a grandson of celebrated Iranian nationalist Mohammad Mosaddeq and a "lawyer who had been active in human rights causes" before the downfall of the shah and the son of the fourth prime minister and the jurist Ahmad Matin-Daftari.
Its economic programs favored "the mass of the people", and it supported a "decentralized system of administration based on popularly elected local councils.
For example, "connections to foreign institutions, persons, or sources of funding" are enough to bring criminal charges such as "undermining national security" against individuals.
Regarding the gradual unraveling of the reformist movement, an article from The Economist magazine said, The Tehran spring of ten years ago has now given way to a bleak political winter.
The peaceful demonstrations and protests of the Khatami era are no longer tolerated: in January 2007 security forces attacked striking bus drivers in Tehran and arrested hundreds of them.
[82]Although relatively peaceful when compared to the state-sponsored assassinations that occurred in the first decade of the Islamic republic, throughout the 1990s the theocratic regime rarely hesitated to apply violent tactics to crush its political adversaries, with demonstrators and dissidents commonly being imprisoned, beaten, tortured or murdered ("disappeared").
[85] Ahmad Batebi, a demonstrator in the July 1999 Iranian student riots, received a death sentence for "propaganda against the Islamic Republic System."
