Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, born in 1956, president of Iran (2005- ) and former mayor of Tehrān, who emerged from relative political obscurity to represent Iran at a time of heightened international scrutiny. Prior to Ahmadinejad’s election to the presidency, United States president George W. Bush had labeled Iran as part of an “axis of evil” that supported terrorism. Iran’s pursuit of a uranium-enrichment program that could enable it to manufacture nuclear weapons also placed Ahmadinejad in an international spotlight.

Born into a working-class family in Garmsār, just south of Tehrān, Ahmadinejad was one of seven children. He tested well in nationwide university entrance examinations and in 1975 was admitted to Tehrān’s University of Science and Technology, where he studied civil engineering. He earned a master’s degree there and a Ph.D. in engineering and traffic transportation planning.

As a student, Ahmadinejad supported the revolution that toppled the monarchical dictatorship of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979 and replaced it with an Islamic state led by Ayatollah Khomeini. Ahmadinejad was accused of taking part in the student takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehrān in 1979. Several of the embassy personnel who were taken hostage identified him as one of the hostage takers, but Ahmadinejad denies it and several of his political opponents say that he was not involved. Still other accounts say he took part in meetings where the takeover was discussed and that he advocated storming the embassy of the Soviet Union, as well.

When Iraq invaded Iran at the start of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, Ahmadinejad joined the Revolutionary Guard. He became an intelligence officer and rose in rank to become a senior commander. Several accounts say that he directed assassination teams during the war, including assaults carried out in Iraq.

Following the war, Ahmadinejad governed two cities in Iran before being appointed governor of the newly formed Ardabīl Province in 1994. He lost the appointment with the election in 1997 of Iranian president Mohammed Khatami, a political moderate. Ahmadinejad returned to academia, lecturing and serving on the board of the Civil Engineering College of the University of Science and Technology.

In 2003 Ahmadinejad became the mayor of Tehrān with the backing of conservative Islamic forces. In 2005 he ran for the presidency as a member of the Developers Party, which opposed the free-market policies of his leading opponent, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Although he was regarded as the conservative candidate, Ahmadinejad ran as a populist, focusing his campaign on issues of poverty, high unemployment, social justice, and the uneven distribution of Iran’s oil wealth. In a runoff election, he overwhelmingly defeated Rafsanjani, taking more than 60 percent of the vote.

As president, Ahmadinejad quickly became a controversial figure when he described the Holocaust as a “myth” at a conference that condemned Zionism. He insisted on Iran’s right to enrich uranium for nuclear reactors, saying Iran’s nuclear program was intended only for generating electricity. In February 2006, however, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) charged that it had evidence of an Iranian military program to produce high explosives, like those used in detonating a nuclear weapon. The report charged that there appeared to be “administrative interconnections” between the high explosives work and Iran’s uranium-enrichment program. In 2005 the IAEA accused Iran of not complying with its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. See also Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.

In May 2006 Ahmadinejad sent a lengthy “open letter” to U.S. president George W. Bush. In it, he disputed many of the Bush administration’s foreign policies but called for a dialogue between Iran and the United States. The Bush administration dismissed the letter, saying it failed to address the central issue of Iran’s nuclear program. In November 2006 the Iranian president wrote an open letter to the American people. He called for a U.S. troop withdrawal from neighboring Iraq, saying the U.S. invasion was based on lies and deception. The Bush administration called the letter “transparently hypocritical and cynical.”