TEHRAN — Iran's reformist political movement, written off as moribund following the sweeping electoral victories of hardliners in the 2020 and 2024 parliamentary elections, is showing unexpected signs of renewal ahead of by-elections scheduled for April in fourteen constituencies.

The revival has been driven in part by a younger generation of activists who are organising outside traditional reformist party structures, which have been decimated by the Guardian Council's aggressive disqualification of candidates over the past decade. Instead, new networks are forming around civil society organisations, university alumni groups, and digital communities — a looser, more decentralised form of political mobilisation that is harder for authorities to suppress.

Internal polling conducted by a reformist-affiliated think tank — which shared its findings with Iran Report on condition that it not be identified — shows that 61% of respondents in urban constituencies say they are "dissatisfied or very dissatisfied" with the current parliament's handling of economic issues, compared to 44% in a comparable survey conducted two years ago.

The Guardian Council Problem

Any reformist resurgence faces the same structural obstacle that has constrained the movement for two decades: the Guardian Council, an unelected body of twelve jurists and legal scholars, half appointed by the Supreme Leader, that vets all candidates for elected office and has consistently used its authority to exclude reformist and moderate figures.

In the 2024 Majles elections, the council disqualified more than 30% of registered candidates, including many incumbents from the moderate faction. Turnout fell to 41% — the lowest in the history of the Islamic Republic — widely interpreted as a passive protest by voters who felt their choices had been pre-determined.

For the coming by-elections, the council has already indicated that candidates must "demonstrate commitment to the principles of the Islamic Revolution" — language that reformist lawyers say is routinely applied selectively to screen out politically undesirable applicants while approving ideologically aligned ones with similar or weaker credentials.

"We are not naive. We know the rules of the game. But the game is changing, because the legitimacy of those rules is collapsing among ordinary Iranians." — Senior reformist strategist, speaking anonymously in Tehran

A Changed Landscape Since 2022

The nationwide protests of 2022, sparked by the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini, marked a turning point in Iranian politics. While the uprising was suppressed, it exposed the depth of public disillusionment with the system as a whole — including with reformists, whom many younger Iranians criticise for having played within rules that cannot produce meaningful change.

That critique has pushed some prominent reformist figures to adopt more radical positions, calling not merely for reform of specific policies but for the revision of constitutional provisions that concentrate power in unelected bodies. Such demands were previously taboo within the reformist mainstream.

Former President Mohammad Khatami, still the most prominent symbol of the reformist movement despite being banned from most public activities, issued a carefully worded statement in February warning that Iran faces "a governance crisis that incremental reform can no longer address." His remarks were widely interpreted as the furthest he has publicly gone in questioning the system's foundations.

Conservative Divisions

Reformist prospects are also helped by visible fractures within the conservative bloc. The hard-line faction associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the judiciary has clashed openly with a more pragmatic conservative tendency — represented by figures close to the late President Ebrahim Raisi's government — over economic management, foreign policy, and the pace of social restrictions.

Several sitting Majles members from the conservative camp have publicly criticised the government's economic policies, creating the unusual spectacle of the parliament attacking an administration that nominally shares its ideological orientation. This intra-conservative conflict has created political space that reformists are hoping to exploit.

Youth Turnout: The Decisive Variable

Analysts agree that the key variable in the by-elections — as in all recent Iranian electoral contests — will be youth turnout. Iran has an unusually young population, with a large cohort in their twenties and thirties who have grown up entirely under the Islamic Republic and have no memory of the revolutionary idealism that animated the older generation.

Surveys consistently show this demographic is the most likely to boycott elections, the most economically pessimistic, and the most critical of the political system. Persuading them that voting can produce meaningful change — in the face of strong evidence to the contrary — is the central challenge for reformist organisers.

"We are asking young people to do something that has not worked before and trust that it will work this time," said one reformist youth organiser who asked not to be named. "That is a very hard sell. But the alternative — doing nothing — has also not worked. So here we are."

The by-elections will be held on April 17. Results from major urban constituencies like Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz are expected to provide the clearest read on the political mood ahead of the next full parliamentary elections in 2028.