President of Iran
Born: 28 October 1956
Profession: Politicians
Affiliation(s): Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran
Citizenship: Iranian
Profile Early life Ahmadinejad was born near Garmsar in the village of Aradan, in Semnan province. His father, Ahmad, was an ironworker, grocer, barber, blacksmith and religious Shia who taught the Quran His mother, Khanom, was a Sayyida, an honorific title given to those believed to be direct bloodline descendants of the Islamic prophet Muhammad Ahmadinejad's father changed his name from "Saborjhian" or "Sabaghian" when Ahmadinejad was four years old to avoid discrimination when the family moved to Tehran. Sabor is Persian for thread painter, a once common occupation within the Semnan carpet industry. Ahmadinejad was chosen as it means from the race of Ahmad, one of the names given to Muhammad. In 1976, Ahmadinejad took Iran's national university entrance contests. According to his autobiography, he was ranked 132nd out of 400,000 participants that year, and soon enrolled in the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) as an undergraduate student of civil engineering. He earned his PhD (1997) in transportation engineering and planning from Iran University of Science and Technology, located at Tehran, when he was the Mayor of Ardabil Province, located at the north-west of the country. Supporters of Ahmadinejad consider him a "simple man" who leads a "modest" life. As president, he wanted to continue living in the same house in Tehran his family had been living in, until his security advisers insisted that he move. Ahmadinejad had the antique Persian carpets in the Presidential palace sent to a carpet museum, and opted instead to use inexpensive carpets. He is said to have refused the V.I.P. seat on the Presidential plane, and that he eventually replaced it with a cargo plane instead. Also upon gaining Iran's presidency, Ahmadinejad held his first cabinet meeting in the Imam Reza shrine at Mashhad, an act perceived as "pious" Administrative and academic careers Some details of Ahmadinejad's life during the 1980s are not publicly known, but it is known that he held a number of administrative posts in the province of West Azerbaijan, Iran. Many reports say that after Saddam Hussein invaded Iran, Ahmadinejad joined the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and served in their intelligence and security apparatus, but his advisor Mojtaba Samareh Hashemisays, "He has never been a member or an official member of the Revolutionary Guards", having been a Basiji-like volunteer instead. Ahmadinejad was accepted to a Master of Science program at his alma mater in 1986. He joined the faculty there as a lecturer in 1989, and in 1997 received his doctorate in civil engineering and traffic transportation planning. Embassy siege Main article: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the 1979 hostage crisis Shortly after Ahmadinejad was elected president, some western media outlets published claims that he was among the students who stormed the US embassy in Tehran, sparking the Iran hostage crisis. This claim has been denied by the Iranian government, the Iranian opposition as well as a CIA investigation on the matter. Early political career After the Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad became a member of the Office for Strengthening Unity, an organization developed to prevent students from sympathizing or allying with the budding Mojahedin-e Khalq. He first took political office as unelected governor to both Maku and Khoy in West Azarbaijan Province during the 1980s. He eventually became an advisor to the governor general of Kurdistan Province for two years. During his doctoral studies at Tehran, he was appointed governor general of newly formed Ardabil Province from 1993 until Mohammad Khatami removed him in 1997, whereupon he returned to teaching. Mayor of Tehran In 2003, a 12-percent turnout elected conservative candidates from the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran to the City Council of Tehran. The Council appointed Ahmadinejad mayor. As mayor, he reversed changes made by previous moderate and reformist mayors. He put religious emphasis on the activities of cultural centres they had founded, publicised the separation of elevators for men and women in the municipality offices, and suggested that people killed in the Iran–Iraq War be buried in major city squares of Tehran. He also worked to improve the traffic system and put an emphasis on charity, such as distributing free soup to the poor. After his election to the presidency, Ahmadinejad's resignation as the Mayor of Tehran was accepted on 28 June 2005. After two years as mayor, Ahmadinejad was one of 65 finalists for World Mayor in 2005, selected from 550 nominees, only nine of them from Asia. He was among three strong candidates for the top-ten list, but his resignation made him ineligible. Presidency Further information: Government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005–present) 2005 campaign Ahmadinejad was not widely known when he entered the presidential election campaign as he had never run for office before, (he had been mayor of Tehran for only two years and had been appointed, not elected, although he had already made his mark in Tehran for rolling back earlier reforms. He was/is a member of the Central Council of the Islamic Society of Engineers, but his key political support is inside the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran (Abadgaran orDevelopers). He was also helped by support from supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who some described Ahmadinejad as a "protege" of. Ahmadinejad generally sent mixed signals about his plans for his presidency, perhaps to attract both religious conservatives and the lower economic classes. His campaign slogan was: "It's possible and we can do it". In the campaign, he took a populist approach. He emphasized his own modest life, and compared himself with Mohammad Ali Rajai, Iran's second president. Ahmadinejad said he planned to create an "exemplary government for the people of the world" in Iran. He was a "principlist", acting politically based on Islamic and revolutionary principles. One of his goals was "putting the petroleum income on people's tables", meaning Iran's oil profits would be distributed among the poor. Ahmadinejad was the only presidential candidate who spoke out against future relations with the United States. He told Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting the United Nations was "one-sided, stacked against the world of Islam." He opposed the veto power of the UN Security Council's five permanent members: "It is not just for a few states to sit and veto global approvals. Should such a privilege continue to exist, the Muslim world with a population of nearly 1.5 billion should be extended the same privilege." He defended Iran's nuclear program and accused "a few arrogant powers" of trying to limit Iran's industrial and technological development in this and other fields. In his second-round campaign, he said, "We didn't participate in the revolution for turn-by-turn government....This revolution tries to reach a world-wide government." He spoke of an extended program using trade to improve foreign relations, and called for greater ties with Iran's neighbours and ending visa requirements between states in the region, saying that "people should visit anywhere they wish freely. People should have freedom in their pilgrimages and tours." Ahmadinejad described Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, a senior cleric from Qom, as his ideological and spiritual mentor. Mesbah founded the Haghani School of thought in Iran. He and his team strongly supported Ahmadinejad's 2005 presidential campaign. Personal life He was married to Azam Sadat Farahi on 12 June 1981 in Tehran. Farahi was a classmate of Ahmadinejad's when she studied at the Iran University of Science and Technology. They have three children, including one daughter, Fatemeh, and two sons, Mehdi and Alireza. His older son, Mehdi, married the daughter of Ahmadinejad's chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, in 2007; and his younger son, Alireza, is married to the niece of former military general, Mahmoud Kaveh. All of his children studied at the Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic). His son in law is Mehdi Khorshidi.
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