ABSTRACT
Since the election of President Khatami in May 1997, numerous changes have emerged in Iran. One of the most important is the actual formation of political parties. The various political groups that supported President Khatami's election platform or his rival candidate can be divided into three groups. This chapter sets out to define each of these in terms of their purpose and political objectives. Of the three, the group with a more or less defined policy for the country's development and with clear foreign policy objectives is the conservative group, whose candidate Nateq-Nuri lost in the landslide victory of President Mohammad Khatami, whose election manifesto had its basis in the rule of law, freedom of expression and development of civil society. These slogans were exactly what the people had been crying out for since the revolution but had been denied for the past two decades.
