Ahmadinejad biography

President of Iran from 2005 to 2013

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born Mahmoud Sabbaghian on 28 October 1956) is an Iranian principlist and nationalist politician who served as the sixth president of Iran from 2005 to 2013. He is currently a member of the Expediency Discernment Council. He was known for his hardline views and nuclearisation of Iran. He was also the main political leader of the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, a coalition of conservative political groups in the country, and served as mayor of Tehran from 2003 to 2005, reversing many of his predecessor's reforms.

An engineer and teacher from a poor background, he was ideologically shaped by thinkers such as Navvab Safavi, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad, and Ahmad Fardid. After the Iranian Revolution, Ahmadinejad joined the Office for Strengthening Unity. Appointed a provincial governor in 1993, he was replaced along with all other provincial governors in 1997 after the election of President Mohammad Khatami and returned to teaching.Tehran's council elected him mayor in 2003. He took a religious hard line, reversing reforms of previous moderate mayors. His 2005 presidential campaign, supported by the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran, garnered 62% of the runoff election votes, and he became president on 3 August 2005.

During his presidency, Ahmadinejad was a controversial figure both in Iran and worldwide. He was criticized domestically for his economic policies, and was accused of disregard for human rights by organizations in North America and Europe. Outside of Iran, he was criticized for his hostility towards countries including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and other Western and Arab states. In 2007, Ahmadinejad introduced a gasoline rationin

No other President of Iran has had comparable air time on international media outlets than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was reported that the ticket to his speech at Columbia University in September 2007 sold out almost as fast as those granting access to the concert of Bruce Springsteen, one of the idols of the popular music culture in the United States. Cab drivers from Malaysia to Venezuela praise him as an “anti-imperial hero” of the “oppressed” classes and US neoconservatives in the United States and their right-wing counterparts in Israel vilify him as an irrational anti-Semite. So when I first heard that Kasra Naji was writing a biography of the Islamic Republic’s ninth President, I was elated. Iran is currently undergoing a major transformation process in its domestic politics and international relations. Ahmadinejad is both a product of these changes and an agent of them. A biography of him is necessary and timely, so I turned to Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader with great interest.

Mr Ahmadinejad has also angered Western powers with his views on Israel.

He has called for an end to the Israeli state and has described the Holocaust as a myth.

In October 2005, Mr Ahmadinejad made a statement in which he envisaged the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state.

He was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, and his words were widely translated as a call for Israel to be "wiped off the map", though this translation is disputed.

That was quickly interpreted by Western news agencies as an oblique threat to Israel.

Mr Ahmadinejad has since stated that his speech was exaggerated and misinterpreted.

He denied that he meant military intervention and said instead that Israel's "Zionist regime" would eventually collapse on its own.

During a speech at the UN in April 2009, he commented that Israel was a state founded on racist principles, an outburst that prompted a walk-out by delegates from at least 30 countries but earned him a hero's welcome on his return home.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an Iranian politician and diplomat who served as the sixth President of Iran from August 2005 to August 2013.

Ahmadinejad(born October 28, 1956) was born in Garmsar, near Tehran in central Iran. His father, Ahmad, was a grocer, barber and religious Shi'a Muslim who taught the Quran, while his mother, Khanom, held an honorific title given to those believed to be direct bloodline descendants of Muhammad.

In 1976, Ahmadinejad enrolled in the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) as an undergraduate student of civil engineering. He earned his Ph.D. in 1997 in transportation engineering and planning from IUST when he was the Mayor of Ardabil Province.

Confusion surrounds Ahmadinejad's role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Several of the American hostages from the U.S. embassy said they are certain Ahmadinejad was among those who captured them. Ahmadinejad, however, always maintained his distance from this incident and several known hostage-takers also denied he was with them.

After the Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad joined the Revolutionary Guards voluntarily and he is also reported to have served in covert operations during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980's.

In 2003, the City Council of Tehran appointed Ahmadinejad as mayor of Iran's capital city. He stayed in that post until is election to the presidency in June 2005. That year, Ahmadinejad was one of the top ten finalists for the "World Mayor 2005" award, however his resignation to take the post of president made him ineligible for the award.

In June 2005, Ahmadinejad, a mostly unknown candidate who had never before run for political office, won 62% of the votes in a run-off against former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and he was inaugurated into the post by Ayatollah Khamenei in August 2005. In 2009, with the explicit support of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad won reelection as president, beating his main competitor Mir-Hossein Mou