Earlier this month, for the first time in over a year, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani met with top Reformist figures to listen to their criticism. The meeting raised hopes that the two sides can mend their increasingly strained ties.

In the 2013 presidential elections, Rouhani — who at the time was mostly unknown to the Iranian public — managed to win after gaining the support of the Reformists, including former President Mohammad Khatami. The Reformists again threw their weight behind Rouhani in 2017, thwarting the conservative push to place cleric Ebrahimi Raisi in office.

Since Rouhani's victory in 2013, the Reformists have been critical of many of his positions and appointments. During his first term, Rouhani was slammed by his supporters for not appointing senior Reformists to his cabinet, and also for failing to fulfill his electoral promises to expand social and political freedoms as well as put an end to the long house arrests of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi.

The Reformists’ disagreements with Rouhani reached a new climax after his re-election last year, when the moderate president began to blatantly ignore his promises. Rouhani was accused of siding with the conservatives on a number of issues and turning a deaf ear to his Reformist backers. This gap is believed to be rooted in Rouhani's inner circle’s positions on the Reformist camp. Many Reformists have blamed the president’s apparent turn to the right on Mahmoud Vaezi, who was appointed as his chief of staff after the 2017 election. A number of Reformists have claimed that Vaezi has been acting as a firewall, preventing any engagement between the two sides.