11.01.2007

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: A Short Biography

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born in 1956 in the village of Aradan in the Iranian city of Garmsar. He was the fourth of seven children of a working class family. His father, a blacksmith, moved the family to Tehran when Ahmadinejad was a year old.

After completing secondary school, he was accepted in 1975 by the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran to study civil engineering, where he also received a Masters in Science in 1989 and a Ph.D. in transportation engineering and planning in 1997.1 Upon receiving his M.S., Ahmadinejad became a faculty member of the university’s civil engineering department.

Ahmadinejad was affiliated with different political and religious societies throughout his studies. During the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Ahmadinejad helped form the Office of Strengthening Unity, a student group that planned the seizure of the U.S embassy in Tehran. 

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s Ahmadinejad was an instructor in the Basij, a militia that recruited children to fight on the front lines and clear minefields in suicide missions. Ahmadinejad later served as a commander in the Revolutionary Guards.

After the war, Ahmadinejad served as governor of two towns in western Iran, Maku and Khoy. From 1993 to 1997 Ahmadinejad was governor general of the Ardabil Province. In 2003 Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi backed Ahmadinejad’s candidacy for mayor of Tehran, assuring him victory in the election. Upon taking office Ahmadinejad revoked the reforms of previous mayors and introduced a stricter religious code, especially regarding gender segregation in public.

Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in June 2005, defeating Hashemi Rafasanjari with 62 percent of the vote in a second run-off poll. Rafasanjari labelled the presidential campaign “illegal” and was quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency as saying that, “All the means of the regime were used in an organized and illegal way to intervene in the election.”

Ahmadinejad is married and has two sons and a daughter.

References

1 “Biography of H.E. Dr. Ahmadinejad, Honourable President of Islamic Republic of Iran,” Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2006.
http://www.president.ir/eng/ahmadinejad/bio/

“Profile: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” BBC, April 28, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4107270.stm

“If only Iran's nuclear nutter had stuck to traffic planning,” Times of London, December 18, 2005. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1937707,00.html

“Biography of H.E. Dr. Ahmadinejad, ibid.
Burke, Jason, “Meet the West’s worst nightmare,” The Guardian, January 15, 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1686793,00.html

“Iran loser blasts ‘illegal’ poll,” BBC, June 25, 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4622955.stm