People flooded polling booths and cast their votes for Mr. Khatami. ‎

Nothing connected these people together other than their dissatisfaction with Iran's conditions ‎and their hope for "change." What Khatami's supporters did not share in common was what ‎exactly this "change" consisted of, and how far was it supposed to go. ‎

On the other hand, Khatami, who had entered the race in hopes of building a movement for ‎future success was caught off guard when he received 20 million votes. Suddenly he found ‎himself in the middle of a situation that he had not even thought about. ‎

Mr. Khatami was, in the first place, the country's President. As such, he had to deal with a heavy ‎workload every single day. Secondly, he had promised change and reform, and now every group ‎demanded its own particular interests from him. Thirdly, he had defeated his rival in a bitter and ‎eventful campaign. The retaliation coming from his rival’s party threatened him. ‎

Khatami's supporters were many but dispersed. He took no particular action to unite and ‎mobilize them. Nevertheless, Khatami's vast support meant that he had control over the ‎country’s public opinion, which we can call the psychological aspect of power. ‎

Khatami's influence over public opinion kept the rival party in check for some time. After a ‎while, however, the rival party realized that Khatami is incapable of turning psychological power ‎into real, tangible power. ‎

Khatami's rival party, which had consolidated itself during Rafsanjani's presidency, dealt with its ‎remaining problems quickly and mobilized its forces in a bid to defeat the reformists. ‎

In addition to other measures it took to subvert the reform movement, the rival party began ‎propagating a radical ideology to mobilize its social base. ‎

Since the philosophy behind this ideology was to defeat the reform movement, the ideology itself ‎was in contradiction with reformist principles. In addition to propagating this ideology and ‎mobilizing a social base around it, the rival party did not ignore the vast but dispersed army of ‎Khatami's supporters. ‎

The rival party continuously destabilized the political environment, which added to the country's ‎countless existing problems. It also focused on the economic needs of various classes and raised ‎the public's expectations to unattainable levels. As a result, people gradually lost hope in the ‎reform movement and became passive and inactive. ‎

The natural result of these developments was the election of Ahmadinejad to presidency, ‎something that perhaps even the authors of this plan did not foresee.‎

In my opinion, the victory of a reformist candidate in the 2005 presidential elections could have ‎logically led to two situations: the new president would have had to succumb to the ideology and ‎plans of the rival party, which would have been disastrous; or he would have had to battle the ‎rival party, which would have led to massive violence and possibly even a civil war. The least ‎costly option, with all its repercussions, was the election of someone like Ahmadinejad. ‎