Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (محمود احمدی‌نژاد; born 1956), also written Ahmadinezhad, is the President-elect of Iran and will become the sixth president on August 2, 2005. He was the mayor of Tehran from May 3, 2003 until June 28, 2005, shortly after his election to presidency, and is widely considered to be a religious conservative with Islamist and populist views. Ahmadinezhad was a civil engineer; and a professor at Iran University of Science and Technology before his mayorship.

Ahmadinejad was elected President of Iran on June 24, 2005 in the second round of the 2005 presidential election over his rival, former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom Ahmadinejad defeated with 61.69% of the vote out of the about twenty-eight million votes, an official turnout of about 59.6%. Before the first round of voting some 1000 candidates were disqualified by the Iranian Council of Guardians, leaving seven candidates to officially run in the first round. Rafsanjani had won the most votes in the first round, while Ahmadinejad had only secured 19.48% of the votes. Iranian analysts say that Ahmadinejad's simple lifestyle and his populist views had won him support, especially amongst the poorer classes of people.

Politically, Ahmadinejad is a member of the Islamic Society of Engineers, but he also has a powerful base inside the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran (also known as Abadgaran). Ahmadinejad is considered one of the main figures in the alliance. The alliance was divided in supporting him and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in the first round of the presidential election.

Platform

Ahmadinejad has generally sent mixed signals about his plans for his presidency, which some US-based analysts consider to have been designed to attract both the religious conservative and the socially and economically poorer people. The following is based on what is not known to have been denied later by him or his supporters. His campaign motto was "It's possible and we can do it" (می‌شود و می‌توانیم).

In his presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad had taken a populist approach, with emphasis on his own simple life, and had compared himself with Mohammad Ali Rajai, the second President of Iran — a claim that raised objections from Rajai's family. Ahmadinejad plans to create an "exemplary government for the world people" in Iran. He is a self-described principlist; that is, acting politically based on Islamic and revolutionary principles. One of his goals were "putting the petroleum income on people's tables", referring to Iran's oil profits being distributed amongst the poorer classes.

Ahmadinejad was the only presidential candidate who talked against future relations with the United States. Also, in an interview with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting a few days before the elections, Ahmadinejad accused the United Nations of being "one-sided, stacked against the world of Islam." He has openly opposed the veto power given to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. In the same interview, he mentioned that "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." In addition, he has defended Iran's nuclear program and has accused "a few arrogant powers" of attempting to limit Iran's industrial and technological development in this and other fields. In a question by a Shargh journalist about the release of political prisoners in case he becomes president, Ahmadnizhad answered with a question: "Which political prisoners? The political prisoners in the United States?"

After his election he proclaimed “Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world,” he said. “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world.” [1]

During his campaign for the second round, he has said "we didn't participate in the revolution for turn-by-turn government [...] This revolution tries to reach a world-wide government" [2]. Also he has mentioned that he has an extended program on fighting terrorism in order to improve foreign relations and has 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 usually avoids interviews with independent journalists, or avoids answering their questions by asking other questions [3] and asking them not to ask "complicated questions". [4]

Biography

Born in the Arādān village near Garmsar, the son of a blacksmith, his family moved to Tehran when he was one year old. He entered Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) as an undergraduate student of civil engineering in 1976. He continued his studies in the same university, entering the MSc program for civil engineering in 1986, the same time he joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (see below), and finally receiving his PhD in Traffic and transportation engineering and planning. The graduate program was a special program for the Revolutionary Guards members funded by the organization itself. After graduation, Ahmadinejad became a professor at the civil engineering department at IUST.

In 1979, Ahmadinejad was the head representative of IUST to the unofficial student gatherings that occasionally met with the Ayatollah Khomeini. In these sessions, the foundations of the first Office for Strengthening Unity (daftar-e tahkim-e vahdat), the student organization of which several members behind seizure of the United States embassy which led to the Iran hostage crisis, were created. Ahmadinejad became a member of the Office of Strengthening Unity. Before the seizure of the embassy, Ahmadinejad had suggested a simultaneous or similiar attempt against the Soviet Union embassy, which was voted down and had resulted in the matter taken out of the Office, and persued independently by the proponents of the idea.

During the Iran-Iraq war, Ahmadinejad joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in 1986. After training at the headquarters, he saw action in extraterritorial covert operations against Kirkuk, Iraq. Later he also became the head engineer of the sixth army of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and the head of the Corps' staff in the western provinces of Iran. After the war, he has served as vice governor and governor of Maku and Khoy, an Advisor to the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and the governor of the then newly established Ardabil province from 1993 to October 1997.

Mayorship

But Ahmadinejad was mostly an unknown figure in Iranian politics, until he was elected Mayor of Tehran by the second City Council of Tehran on May 3, 2003, after the city council elections of 2003 when a 12% turnout led to the election of the conservative candidates of Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran in Tehran. During his mayorship, he has reversed many of the changes put into effect by previous moderate and reformist mayors, putting serious religious emphasis on the activites of the cultural centers founded by previous mayors, going on the record with the separation of elevators of men and women in the municipality offices [5] and suggesting the burial of the body of the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war in major city squares of Tehran.

As the Mayor of Tehran, Ahmadinejad also became the manager in charge of the daily newspaper Hamshahri, which led to dismissing Mohammad Atrianfar as the editor and replacing him with Alireza Sheikh-Attar, who was subsequently fired on June 13, 2005, a few days before the presidential elections, because of not supporting Ahmadinejad for the post. Sheikh-Atter was replaced with Ali Asghar Ash'ari, a previous Vice Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance during the ministership of Mostafa Mirsalim. During his managing, he has also fired Nafiseh Kouhnavard, one of Hamshahri's journalists, for asking a question from President Khatami, about the "red lines" of the regime and illegal parallel intelligence agencies, that Ahmadinejad didn't consider appropriate, and later accused Ms Kouhnavard of spying for Turkey and Republic of Azerbaijan. [6]

Ahmadinejad is known to have quarreled with the reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who then barred him from attending meetings of the Board of Ministers, a privilege usually extended to mayors of Tehran. He has publicly criticized Khatami of not knowing about the daily problems of the general public.

After two years as Tehran mayor, Ahmadinejad was shortlisted in a list of sixty-five finalists for World Mayor 2005 [7] out of the 550 nominated mayors. Only nine mayors were from Asia.

Ahmadinejad resigned from his post as the mayor of Tehran after his election to the presidency. His resignation was accepted on June 28, 2005 and he was replaced by Ali Saeedlou, one of Ahmadinejad's vice mayors, as the temporary supervisor of the municipality of Tehran. [8].

Allegations

On June 29, 2005, shortly after Ahmadinejad won the presidential election, several major western news outlets have publicized various allegations against Ahmadinejad. These include charges that he participated heavily in the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis, assasinations of Kurdish politicians in Austria, and executions of political prisoners in the Evin prison in Tehran. Ahmadinejad and his political supporters have have denied these allegations. Additionally, a number of Ahmadinejad's political opponents in Iran have specifically denied allegations of his participation in the Iran Hostage Crisis. In July of 2005, US President George W Bush declared that these charges were serious and must be investigated. The Iranian government stated that the circulating allegations against Ahmadinejad in the western media are merely part of a smear campaign orchestrated by the US and and what the Iranian officials have called "Zionist media" (a hint toward Israel), directed against Ahmadinejad in specific and Iran in general. As of July of 2005, no independent commision has surfaced to investigate these charges and pronounce its findings.

From before the second round of the election, in late July of 2005, there have also been allegations of politicial corruption from Ahmadinejad's political opponents in Iran, especially from the reformists.

Involvement in the 1979 Hostage Crisis

With Ahmadinejad's recent publicity, former U.S. hostages Dr. William Daugherty (who worked for the CIA in Iran), Kevin Hermening, David Roeder, US Army Col. Charles Scott (Ret.), and US Navy Capt. Donald Sharer (Ret.) have alleged that Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders of the Iran Hostage Crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, during their 444-day captivity starting on November 4, 1979. All of the above-mentioned hostages have claimed that they are "certain" that Ahmadinejad is the man whom they remember from their captivity.

File:Claimed-to-be-ahmadinejad.jpg

Photograph originally claimed by "Iran Focus" and published by several major Western news agencies (including AP, AFP, and Reuters), claiming the man walking the hostage (circled) is Ahmadinejad, one of the captors in of the U.S. embassy hostages, 1979. Saeed Hajjarian, a lead reformist and a critic of Ahmadinezhad with a background in Iranian intelligence, claims to recognize the pictured man to be Taghi Mohammadi. Click on the image for viewing the full size for better comparison.

Col. Charles Scott, now 73, recently said to the Washington Times [9] that "He was one of the top two or three leaders; the new president of Iran is a terrorist." Col. Scott claimed to recall an incident when Ahmadinejad berated a friendly Iranian guard who had allowed the two Americans to visit another U.S. hostage in a neighboring cell. Col. Scott, who understands Farsi, said Ahmadinejad told the guard, "You shouldn't let these pigs out of their cells." Donald Sharer, a retired Navy captain who was for a time a cellmate of Col. Scott at the Evin prison in northern Tehran, remembered Ahmadinejad as "a hard-liner, a cruel individual." "I know he was an interrogator," said Capt. Sharer, now 64. Former hostages William Daugherty & Kevin Hermening also claim he was involved.

Scott and Roeder have also expressed certainty that Ahmadinejad was present at their interrogations. Scott asserted his certainty forcefully, stating: "This is the guy. There's no question about it. You could make him a blond and shave his whiskers, put him in a zoot suit and I'd still spot him." Both those men, along with Sharer and Hermening, have stated their recollections of Ahmadinejad as an "extremely cruel" ringleader. Of the above men, only Hermening has expressed that he was not immediately sure that Ahmadinejad was involved in the Hostage Crisis.

However, former hostages USAF Col. Thomas E. Schaefer (Ret.), Paul Lewis (a former Marine embassy guard), and Barry Rosen (former embassy press attache) have expressed uncertainty regarding whether Ahmadinejad was actually involved. Schaefer stated that he does not recall Ahmadinejad by face or name, and Lewis expressed noticing a vague familiarity upon seeing Ahmadinejad's picture, but said that he could not be sure if Ahmadinejad was actually the same person as his captor. "My memories were more of the gun barrel, not the people behind it," stated Lewis. Rosen, while not claiming to personally recognize Ahmadinejad, professes to believe those who do claim to recognize the new Iranian President-elect. "When you're in a situation like that... it doesn't go away," Rosen stated.

Iran Focus, one of numerous web outlets of the MKO terrorist group, originally claimed that they had obtained a photograph (right) of a younger Ahmadinejad with a hostage. The major Western news media AP, Reuters and AFP were quick to publish it to the world without due investigation or verification. It is hard to explain how three of the most major news organizations of the world can simultaneously commit an error that a first-year journalism student would not do.

In response to this, Saeed Hajjarian, a reformist politician and a critic of Ahmadinezhad, a previous advisor to President Mohammad Khatami with a background in intelligence in founding the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran, has denied that that picture is Ahmadinejad. Hajjarian has told Associated Press and later ISNA that the person in the photograph is not Ahmadinejad but a student named Taghi Mohammadi. Hajjarian also denied allegations about Ahmadinejad's role in slaying Kurdish opposition leaders in Vienna [10]. While Associated press and other sources originally reported that Mohammadi later turned into a dissident, was arrested for being connected to MKO and involved in assasination of President Mohammad Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar, and committed suicide in jail [11], Hajjarian has told ISNA that Mohammadi was not a dissident but a supporter of the Iranian government and that he had even been the Iranian Envoy to Afghanistan for a while, and that Mohammadi was not jailed but "died in a suspicious way". Hajjarian also mentioned that AP has incorrectly called him an advisor to the president, while he doesn't hold that title anymore, since a few years ago [12].

It should be noted that Hajjarian's report is contradicting one of Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, one of the spokesmen of the hostage taker students, who has identified the same person as "Ranjbaran", whom Asgharzadeh claims was hanged because of being a spy of MKO. But both Asgharzadeh and Hajjarian have recognized the person standing on the other side of the hostage as "Jafar Zaker", a later martyr of the Iran-Iraq war. [13].

Only July 2, 2005 the LA Times reported the following about the photo originally circulated by Iran Focus: "A U.S. official familiar with the investigation of Ahmadinejad's role said that analysts had found "serious discrepancies" between the figure depicted in the 1979 photo and images of the Iranian president. The discrepancies included differences in facial structure and features, the official said." [14].

Many of the former hostage takers have stated unequivocally that Ahmadinejad was in no way involved in the Hostage Crisis. One of them, Bijan Abidi, said that Ahmadinejad "was not involved." He added, "There was no one by that name among the students who took part in the U.S. Embassy seizure." Mohsen Mirdamadi, one of the student leaders, and Masoumeh Ebtekar, the spokeswoman of the students who became a Vice President under President Khatami, have also denied Ahmadinejad's involvement. Abbas Abdi, another leader of the 1979 embassy takeover, and a political opponent of Ahmadinejad, expressed certainty that Ahmadinejad was not involved. "Definitely he was not among the students who took part in the seizure," Abdi said. "He was not part of us. He played no role in the seizure, let alone being responsible for security [for the students]." Rosen has stated that Abdi lacks credibility on this issue. Rosen said that Abdi told him personally, while both men met in Paris in 1998, that Abdi, while heavily involved in the embassy takeover, was never actually inside the embassy building. "So he can't maintain that [Ahmadinejad] was or wasn't," Rosen stated.

An aide to Ahmadinejad, Meisam Rowhani, denied all claims that Ahmadinejad was involved in the Hostage Crisis. Rowhani stated that Ahmadinejad was asked during recent private meetings if he had a role in the hostage taking. Rowhani said he replied, "No. I believed that if we do that the world will swallow us." Although Ahmadinejad has publicly expressed support for the hostage taking, he has claimed that he only supported the embassy takeover after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini expressed support, and that he was never actually involved.

About the leadership of the takeover, Shargh has mentioned that the three main leaders of the takeover were Ebrahim Asgharzadeh, Mohsen Mirdamadi, and Habibollah Bitaraf (two of which have already denied Ahmadinejad's involvement). This has been confirmed by several sources involved in the takeover, including Masoumeh Ebtekar.

Involvement in assassination of Kurd opponents in Austria

Peter Pilz, a Jewish Austrian politician and former spokesman of the Austrian Green Party, has alleged Ahmadinejad to have possibly had a hand in international assassinations ordered by the Iranian government against political opposition groups [15], including a 1989 assasination of exiled Kurdish leader Abdolrahman Ghassemlou and two of his associates in Vienna. After Ahmadinejad's election to presidency, in early July 2005, Pilz passed his documents about his claims to the Austrian Interior ministry, which "were then forwarded to the state prosecutor's office" [16].

This allegation has been denied by several sources in Iran, including Saeed Hajjarian, a political opponent of Ahmadinejad [17]. Also notable among the deniers, is Ali Rabiee, the intelligence advisor to the reformist President Khatami, who has mentioned that "during the the mentioned accident happened, I was present in action regions of northwest and western Iran, and at that time Mr Ahmadinejad was only involved at the civil construction work in the governoing offices of Maku and the province". At the same time, the allegation has been echoed by a spokesman for the People's Mujahedin of Iran, a militant opposition group in exile.

Reuters has mentioned that information [Pilz] received from an "extraordinarily credible" informer, an Iranian journalist living in France who Pilz calls only "witness D". [...] Witness D's information came from one of the alleged gunmen, who contacted Witness D in 2001 but later drowned, Pilz said. [18] Supporters of Ahmadinejad have questioned the credibility of such information, have mentioned that Pilz is a Jew, and have called the media reporting these to be "zionist media". Also, Hamid Reza Asefi, the spokesman of the Iranian Ministry of Foregin Affairs has said that "The charges are so self-evidently false they are not worthy of response. [...] We advise the Europeans not to fall into the trap of the Zionist media and to separate their interests from America and the Zionist entity." [19]

Political corruption

During the Iranian presidential election of 2005, some people, including Mehdi Karroubi, the pragmatic reformist candidate who ranked third in the election, have alleged that a network of mosques, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Basij militia forces, have been illegally used to generate and mobilize support for Ahmadinejad. Karroubi has explicitly alleged Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, among the conspirators. Ahmadinejad's supporters consider these to be false allegations. Furthermore, Ayatollah Khamenei has written to Karroubi and mentioned that his allegations are "below his dignity" and "will result in a crisis" in Iran, which he will not allow. As a reply, Karroubi resigned from all his political posts, including an Advisor to the supreme leader and a member of Expediency Discernment Council, on both of which he has been installed by Khamenei. [20] Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmanizhad's rival in the secound round, has also pointed to organized and unjust interventions by "guiding" the votes, and has supported Karroubi's complaint. [21]. Rafsanjani had also alleged a "dirty tricks" campaign had "illegally" propelled Ahmadinejad into the presidency, an allegation which he strongly denies. Rafsanjani later accepted the results and told everyone to "assist" the new president-elect.

Also, some political groups, including the reformist party Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF), have alleged that Ahmadinejad had won so many votes because of illegal support and advertising activities for him during the voting by the supervisors selected by the Guardian Council, while the supervisors should have remained impartisan according to the election law. [22] Also, the reformist newspaper Shargh has pointed to an announcement by Movahhedi Kermani, the official representative of the supreme leader in Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, mentioning "vote for a person who keeps to the minimum in his advertisements and doesn't lavish", which uniquely pointed to Ahmadinejad.

Criticism of his views

Many reformist and independent political parties, including some of those who have boycotted the first round of the presidential election, have called for an alliance against Ahmadinejad, calling it "a national alliance against fascism". For example, IIPF has asked for people voting in the second round to "prevent the danger of a rise of religious fascism" and Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization talking about "the danger of the rule of fascism". [23] Critics, including some independent ones, have mentioned that while there are some similiarities between the actions and rising of supporters of Ahmadinejad with those of Fascism, there are important differences. Firstly, the movement is not nationalistic or racist. Secondly, it lacks corporatism. Another point of criticism is that it uses general or inaccurate words to describe an opponent. Many critics of his viewpoint call his platform "fictional socialism".