^Mehdi Mozaffari, What is Islamism? History and Definition of a Concept, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 2007, 8 (1): 17–33, doi:10.1080/14690760601121622, In fact, Iranian ‘Islamists’ of our day call themselves ‘Usul gara’, which literally means ‘fundamentalist’, but in a positive sense. It designates a ‘person of principles’ who is the ‘true Muslim’.
^Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Women's Rights, Shari'a Law, and the Secularization of Islam in Iran, International Journal of Politics Culture and Society (New York), 2013, 26 (3): 237–253, doi:10.1007/s10767-013-9143-x, “Principlism” or osul-gera’i first appeared in the Iranian political lexicon during the second-term presidency of Mohammad Khatami as an alternative to eslāh-talabi or reformism. Although principlists do not share a uniform political platform, they all believed that the reformist movement would lead the Republic towards secularism. One of the most common elements of their political philosophy is the comprehensiveness of the shari‘a. The responsibility of the Islamic state is to determine ways of implementing the mandates of Islam, rather than the reformist project of reinterpreting the shari‘a to correspond to the demands of contemporary society.
^Mohseni, Payam. Factionalism, Privatization, and the Political economy of regime transformation. Brumberg, Daniel; Farhi, Farideh (编). Power and Change in Iran: Politics of Contention and Conciliation. Indiana Series in Middle East Studies. Indiana University Press. 2016: 47. ISBN 978-0253020680.
^ 6.06.16.2Melody Mohebi, The Formation of Civil Society in Modern Iran: Public Intellectuals and the State, Palgrave Macmillan: 129–131, 2014, ISBN 978-1-137-40110-6
^ 7.07.1Robert J. Reardon, Containing Iran: Strategies for Addressing the Iranian Nuclear Challenge, RAND Corporation: 81–82, 2012, ISBN 978-0833076373
^Mehdi Moslem, Factional Politics in Post-Khomeini Iran, Syracuse University Press: 135, 2002, ISBN 9780815629788
^Said Amir Arjomand; Nathan J. Brown. The Rule of Law, Islam, and Constitutional Politics in Egypt and Iran. SUNY Press. 2013: 150. ISBN 978-1-4384-4597-7. “Conservative” is no longer a preferred term in Iranian political discourse. Usulgara', which can be clumsily translated as “principlist” is the term now used to refer to an array of forces that previously identified themselves as conservative, fundamentalist, neo-fundamentalist, or traditionalist. It developed to counter the term eslahgara, or reformist, and is applied to a camp of not necessarily congrous groups and individuals.
^Haddad Adel, Gholamali; Elmi, Mohammad Jafar; Taromi-Rad, Hassan. Political Parties: Selected Entries from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam. EWI Press. 2012-08-31: 108. ISBN 9781908433022.|entry=被忽略 (帮助)
^Robin B. Wright (编), The Iran Primer: Power, Politics, and U.S. Policy, US Institute of Peace Press: 37, 2010, ISBN 978-1601270849
^Masoud Kazemzadeh, Intra-Elite Factionalism and the 2004 Majles Elections in Iran, Middle Eastern Studies, 2008, 44 (2): 189–214, doi:10.1080/00263200701874867, In Western sources, the term ‘hard-liners’ is used to refer to the faction under the leadership of Supreme Leader Ali Khamanehi. Members of this group prefer to call themselves ‘Osul-gara’. The word ‘osul’ means ‘fundamentals’, or ‘principles’ or ‘tenets’. And the suffix ‘gara’ means ‘those who uphold or promote’. The more radical elements in the hard-line camp prefer to call themselves ‘Ommat Hezbollah’. ‘Ommat’ is a technical Arabic-Islamic term referring to people who are Muslim. ‘Hezbollah’ literally means ‘Party of Allah’. Before the rise of Ahmadinejad to the presidency in 2005, many official sources in the Islamic Republic referred to this group as ‘mohafezeh-kar’ (‘conservative’). Between 1997 and 2006, many Iranians inside Iran used the terms ‘eqtedar-gara’ (authoritarian) and ‘tamamiyat-khah’ (totalitarian) for what many Western observers have termed ‘hard-liners’. Members of the reformist faction of the fundamentalist oligarchy called the hard-liners ‘eqtedar-gara’.
^Banafsheh Keynoush, Iran after Ahmadinejad, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy (New York), 2012, 54 (3): 127–146, doi:10.1080/00396338.2012.690988, What is important, however, is that the principlist camp now increasingly represents not just hardliners but also more centre-right factions.
^Thaler et. al. Mullahs, Guards, and Bonyads: An Exploration of Iranian Leadership Dynamics. Sacramento, CA: RAND Corporation. 2010. ISBN 978-0-8330-4773-1.
