Iranian Democrat Party or Democrat Party of Iran (DPI; fa, حزب دموکرات ایران, Ḥezb-e Demowkrāt-e Irān) was a short-lived

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

, founded in 1946 and led by

Ahmad Qavam Ahmad Qavam (2 January 1873 – 23 July 1955; fa, احمد قوام), also known as Qavam os-Saltaneh ( fa, قوام السلطنه), was a politician who served as Prime Minister of Iran five times. Early life Qavam was born in 1873 to a ...

. It was the most important party formed by the old

Qajar Qajar Iran (), also referred to as Qajar Persia, the Qajar Empire, '. Sublime State of Persia, officially the Sublime State of Iran ( fa, دولت علیّه ایران ') and also known then as the Guarded Domains of Iran ( fa, ممالک م ...

nobility, and an association of aristocrats and anti-British radical intellectuals. With the fall of Qavam, it disintegrated in 1948. The organization tried to give itself the appearance of being the heir of the old Democrat party and was ironically named "Democrat Party of ''Iran''" in contrast to the communist " Democrat Party of ''Azerbaijan''". The party's ideology was to be nationalist and reformist, but it was organizationally fragile as it was ideologically amorphous. It called for extensive economic, social, and administrative reforms while advocating a revision of the Iranian Armed Forces. It developed an authoritarianist structure and some suspect it planned to create

one-party state A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system, or single-party system is a type of sovereign state in which only one political party has the right to form the government, usually based on the existing constitution. All other parties ...

. According to

Ervand Abrahamian Ervand Abrahamian; hy, Երուանդ Աբրահամեան (born 1940) is an Iranian-American historian of the Middle East. He is Distinguished Professor of History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, Graduate Center of the City Un ...

, Qavam had two paradoxical reasons to establish the party, a "

double-edged sword A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed tip ...

directed at the left as well as the right". He intended to defeat royalist and pro-British candidates in the 1947 Iranian legislative election and to use it to "mobilize non-communist reformers, steal the thunder from the left, and hence build a counterbalance to the

Tudeh Party The Tudeh Party of Iran ( fa-at, حزب تودۀ ایران, Ḥezb-e Tūde-ye Īrān, lit=Party of the Masses of Iran) is an Iranian communist party. Formed in 1941, with Soleiman Mirza Eskandari as its head, it had considerable influence in i ...

References

Political parties established in 1946 Nationalist parties in Asia Political parties disestablished in 1948 {{iran-party-stub