How Iran’s Khomeinist Left reinvented itself as the ‘Reformist’ hard core of power - opinion

The transformation of the Khomeinist Left into “Reformists” was neither an intellectual evolution nor a moral reckoning, nor an attempt to confront or atone for past crimes. 

It was a calculated political deception, comparable to a blood-soaked mafia boss who stages his own death, changes his name, reconstructs his face, and returns to the scene, this time dressed as a “savior.”

Post-1979, the Khomeinist Left emerged as a violent, ideologically rigid force blending religious zealotry with leftist ideology. Far from mere participants, they were the direct executors of state repression and the systematic elimination of opponents.

These figures were not peripheral to power; they were its operational core.

State power, security, and censorship

Sadegh Khalkhali became the symbol of revolutionary brutality. As head of the revolutionary courts established after 1979, he oversaw extrajudicial and summary executions of senior Pahlavi officials, including military commanders and political figures.

Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, the godfather of the Khomeinist Left, orchestrated the 1979 takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran and the hostage-taking of its diplomats, locking Iran into permanent confrontation with the international community.

Saeed Hajjarian, later branded the “architect of reform,” was originally a key architect of the Islamic Republic’s security and intelligence apparatus.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, prime minister throughout the 1980s, governed during a period marked by mass executions and political repression.

Mohammad Khatami, who became the Culture and Islamic Guidance minister in 1982, was responsible for the extensive censorship of literature, art, film, and the press during the 1980s.

Later, as president, Khatami became the international face of “dialogue” and “tolerance,” without ever offering a serious public accounting of his role in enforcing cultural suffocation during that decade.

Regional and global operations: Blood beyond Iran’s borders

The record of the Khomeinist Left was not confined to domestic repression.

Seyyed Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipour represents the ultimate manifestation of this ideology through the regime’s proxy network. For a revolutionary movement, national borders are arbitrary.

This worldview is illustrated by the genesis of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

In a supreme historical irony, Mohtashamipour, later championed as an Iranian “Reformist,” orchestrated this project as Iran’s ambassador to Syria from 1981 to 1985 (1360-1364), with the explicit directive of planting Khomeinist ideology in Lebanon.

At the time, Amal was the mainstream Lebanese Shia force and showed no desire for Tehran’s ideology. Utilizing limitless IRGC cash and weapons, Mohtashamipour engineered a bloody internal schism within Amal.

Radical factions loyal to Ruhollah Khomeini were armed to eliminate moderate rivals. From the ashes of this engineered civil war, Hezbollah emerged not as an indigenous Lebanese party, but as the IRGC’s first foreign franchise.

The October 1983 suicide bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 Americans, was carried out under his direction.

Mostafa Tajzadeh

Under Khatami’s tenure as minister, Mostafa Tajzadeh served as deputy for International Affairs at the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry (1984-1988). He managed cultural relations and Iran’s cultural houses abroad.

The cultural houses were originally established during the Shah’s era to promote Iranian culture and the Persian language.

Under Tajzadeh’s watch, they were transformed into centers for exporting the ideology of the Islamic Revolution, supporting terrorist operations, and promoting Shia sectarianism.

He currently acts as a controlled-opposition figure, pretending to oppose the regime. His reported imprisonment merely makes the performance appear more genuine.

Khomeini’s death and the birth of a political disguise

Following Khomeini’s death in 1989, the Khomeinist Left lost its dominant position within the ruling hierarchy, but was never dismantled. Instead of accountability, it chose reinvention.

No trials.

No confessions.

Not even a single apology to the Iranian people.

By 1997, the same figures behind the 1980s atrocities reclaimed power under a new label: “Reformists.” With softened rhetoric, victimhood, and the systematic erasure of historical memory, they rebranded themselves.

This so-called Reformism was not a rupture with the past, but the same power structure repackaged.

Who is the real ‘hard core of power?’

Perhaps the true “hard core of power” in Iran is not limited to today’s hardliners, but lies even more deeply within yesterday’s Khomeinist Left and today’s Reformists, a political current uniquely skilled at:

• Redefining itself without transforming its essence;

• Changing its language while preserving its power;

• Portraying itself as a victim after decades of executing repression.

• And, when necessary, discarding even the regime’s religious facade to preserve the core of authority.

The distinction between “hardliners” and “reformists” obscures a deeper continuity within the Islamic Republic’s political establishment.

One faction defends revolutionary principles; the other advocates reform. Yet both derive their existence from the same underlying power system.

Changing political language does not constitute a change in political essence.

The Islamic Republic abroad

A significant part of the Islamic Republic’s lobbying network in Western think tanks, universities, and media has been cultivated by figures associated with the so-called Reformists.

Mohammad Javad Zarif played a prominent role in building ties with Western political, academic, and media circles. Westernized and fluent in Western political rhetoric, they promote the regime’s narratives, whitewash its crimes, and sanitize its image.

In effect, there are two Islamic Republics: one inside Iran, and another operating abroad through lobbyists, academics, journalists, and public intellectuals who function as an extension of its propaganda apparatus.

This external network resembles the German American Bund, which served as a vehicle for Nazi propaganda and influence in the United States.

The siloviki analogy

Given the so-called Reformists’ security backgrounds, they can be compared to Russia’s siloviki, political figures with roots in the Soviet security apparatus who helped transform the Soviet Union into the Russian Federation without communism, while preserving much of the underlying power structure.

Many naïve Western observers initially welcomed this transformation, and later Russian President Vladimir Putin, believing a fundamental break with the past had occurred.

The war in Ukraine, an existential war for Europe, should have dispelled that illusion.

The Islamic Republic’s so-called Reformists may be even more dangerous than Russia’s siloviki because their political project is intertwined with religious ideology and a history of Islamist terrorism.

Any expectation of genuine transformation from individuals whose political DNA is rooted in security, violence, and terrorism could therefore be a grave mistake, potentially more dangerous than the miscalculation made with Putin.

Putin is homicidal, but not suicidal. That distinction allows the logic of mutually assured destruction (MAD) to function.

The Islamic Republic, however, is driven by an ideology of religious martyrdom and revolutionary violence. Treating such a system as if it were governed by the same assumptions of rational self-preservation could have catastrophic consequences.

Conclusion

Reformism in Iran was not a genuine project of reform. It was a security-driven survival strategy, a politics of endurance built on collective amnesia, social exhaustion, and the deliberate removal of the bloodshed of the 1980s from public memory.

The faces changed.

The language changed.

The political branding changed.

But the networks, personnel, institutional experience, and their relationship with the Islamic Republic’s power structure remained.

Until this deception is exposed, every new rebranding, whether secular, nationalist, or even “pro-transition,” risks being nothing more than a new name for the same old clique.

The lesson is simple: changing the label, rhetoric, or political faction does not change the regime or its DNA.

The writer is the communications director to Prince Reza Pahlavi and an Iranian journalist who previously served as editor-in-chief of news at Manoto TV, a UK-based Persian-language television network.