Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran

The Alliance of Builders or Developers of Islamic Iran, usually shortened to Abadgaran, was an Iranian conservative political federation of parties and organizations. Described as "Iran's neocons", main groups within the alliance were Front of Followers of the Line of the Imam and the Leader members and Society of Devotees of the Islamic Revolution. According to the Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism, the Abadgaran "seems to have been formed in 2003 and is made up broadly of figures under the age of fifty, who are non-clerics". The group originally consisted of Basij and Revolutionary Guards veterans who rose to mid- and senior-level administrative positions but marginalized during government of Hashemi Rafsanjani. The alliance, mostly active in Tehran, won almost all of Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr's seats in the Iranian Majlis election of 2004 and the 2003 Iranian City and Village Councils elections. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former mayor of Tehran (who was chosen by the Abadgaran–dominated Tehran City Council) was considered one of the main figures in the alliance and won the 2005 presidential election backed by the group. The victory could be said to have put to an end a long period of infighting within the Islamic Republic followed by death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Embracing social justice with a promise to recreate the utopian "original revolutionary spirit at the battlefields of the Sacred Defence", develop a "renewed and truly revolutionary Islamic Republic" for the people and “guarding the revolution and the independence of the country”, they aimed to crush the reformists as a political force, a process began by reducing power of then–President Mohammad Khatami. Controlling the parliament's majority, they soon enacted laws that made foreign investment difficult and hampered Khatami administration's efforts to negotiate with international companies. On the Nuclear program of Iran, they refused to ratify the Additional Protocol that Hassan Rouhani had negotiated with EU-3. They also demanded to pull out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, an action which was not permitted by Ayatollah Khamenei.