Iranian Democrat Party or Democrat Party of Iran (DPI; ) was a short-lived

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area'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 (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

, founded in 1946 and led by Ahmad Qavam. It was the most important party formed by the old

Qajar The Guarded Domains of Iran, alternatively the Sublime State of Iran and commonly called Qajar Iran, Qajar Persia or the Qajar Empire, was the Iranian state under the rule of the Qajar dynasty, which was of Turkic origin,Cyrus Ghani. ''Iran an ...

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 a

one-party state A one-party state, single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a governance structure in which only a single political party controls the ruling system. In a one-party state, all opposition parties are either outlawed or en ...

. According to Ervand Abrahamian, Qavam had two paradoxical reasons to establish the party, a " double-edged sword 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".

References

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