The Middle Eastern George Bush - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

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Profile: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad



Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected Iran's president in June 2005, was an obscure figure when he was appointed mayor of Tehran in the spring of 2003.



He was not much better known when he entered the presidential election campaign, although he had already made his mark as Tehran mayor for rolling back reforms.

Since his election he has taken a tough stand on a number of foreign policy matters, in line with his hardline background.

Revolutionary credentials

Mr Ahmadinejad was born in Garmsar, near Tehran, in 1956, the son of a blacksmith, and holds a PhD in traffic and transport from Tehran's University of Science and Technology, where he was a lecturer.

There has been confusion about his role in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Several of the 52 Americans who were held hostage in the US embassy in the months after the revolution say they are certain Mr Ahmadinejad was among those who captured them.



He insists he was not there, and several known hostage-takers - now his strong political opponents - deny he was with them. His website says he joined the Revolutionary Guards voluntarily after the revolution, and he is also reported to have served in covert operations during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.



When he became mayor of Tehran, the former revolutionary guard curtailed many of the reforms put in place by the moderates who had run the city before him.

Iran's outgoing reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, barred Mr Ahmadinejad from attending cabinet meetings, a privilege normally accorded to mayors of the capital.

Hardline approach

Mr Ahmadinejad reportedly spent no money on his presidential campaign - but he was backed by powerful conservatives who used their network of mosques to mobilise support for him.

He also had the support of a group of younger, second-generation revolutionaries known as the Abadgaran, or Developers, who are strong in the Iranian parliament, the Majlis. His presidential campaign focused on poverty, social justice and the distribution of wealth inside Iran.



During his campaign, he also repeatedly defended his country's nuclear programme, which has worried the US and European Union.

Once in power, he made a defiant speech at the UN on the nuclear issue and refused to back down on Tehran's decision to resume uranium conversion. Nuclear negotiations with the EU are now stalled.

Mr Ahmadinejad also drew widespread criticism from the West when he told a conference in Tehran that the state of Israel should be "wiped off the map".

He has been cautious about re-establishing formal ties with the US, which were broken in 1979.

"America's unilateral move to sever ties with the Islamic Republic was aimed at destroying the Islamic revolution...

"America was free to sever its ties with Iran, but it remains Iran's decision to re-establish relations with America."

At home in Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad has a populist streak, calling his personal website Mardomyar, or the People's Friend. He also has a reputation for living a simple life and campaigned against corruption.

 

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[font=Arial,Verdana,Helvetica]President calls for strengthening of Iran's cultural bonds with Tajikistan [/font]


[font=Arial,Verdana,Helvetica]TEHRAN (IRNA) -- President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan should further strengthen their cultural bonds given that Farsi is the common language spoken in the three states.

The transportation networks among the three Persian-speaking countries would strengthen their cultural bounds and bring about economic growth, he noted in meeting with President of Tajikistan's Assembly of Representatives Saidullo Khairullayev.

Ahmadinejad added that the presidents of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan are to hold a joint meeting in a near future aimed at preparing the ground for cultural development of the three countries.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes any plan that can expedite development of cultural, economic, political and sport relations among the three countries."

Khairullayev for his part hailed the personality of Iran's president and termed him as a great politician in the world of Islam.

He conveyed the greeting of the Tajik president to his Iranian counterpart, stressing that the government and nation of Tajikistan would not forget the assistance Iran has rendered to them in recent years.

He invited President Ahmadinejad to pay an official visit to Tajikistan.

He attached importance to cultural and political ties between Iran and Tajikistan and termed the construction of Anzab Tunnel as well as Sang Toudeh power plant as good examples of extensive cooperation between the two states.

Iran, Tajikistan study expansion of mutual ties

Khairullayev in another meeting with Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki calls for expansion of mutual relations as well as regional cooperation.

According to the Information and Press Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the meeting, Mottaki expressed satisfaction over the peaceful solution to Tajikistan's internal disputes which led to the termination of civil war and said the two countries enjoy common interests and concerns.

Iran and Tajikistan have adopted a joint stance on many international issues, he pointed out.

Referring to the rights and duties of NPT's signatories, he described their observance of obligations while being deprived of their legitimate rights as 'apartheid'. Tajik parliament speaker, for his part, lauded Iran's move for further expansion of all-out relations between the two countries and said, "We are to benefit from Iran's experiences in parliamentary affairs."

Resolving Iran's nuclear dossier peacefully is the only solution to the issue, he said lauding Iran's positive role in restoration of peace and security in war-shattered Afghanistan. The Tajik official, heading a parliamentary delegation, arrived in Tehran on Saturday on a six-day visit.[/font]

 

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Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned Western music from Iran's radio and TV stations, reviving one of the harshest cultural decrees from the early days of 1979 Islamic Revolution. Songs such as George Michael's "Careless Whisper," Eric Clapton's "Rush" and the Eagles' "Hotel California" have regularly accompanied Iranian broadcasts, as do tunes by saxophonist Kenny G.



But the official IRAN Persian daily reported Monday that Ahmadinejad, as head of Iran's Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling by the council to ban Western music.

"Blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required," according to a statement on the council's official Web site.

Ahmadinejad's order means the IRIB must execute the decree and prepare a report on its implementation within six months, according to the newspaper.

"This is terrible," said Iranian guitarist Babak Riahipour, whose music was played occasionally on state radio and TV. "The decision shows a lack of knowledge and experience."

Music was outlawed as un-Islamic by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini soon after the revolution. But as the fervor of the revolution started to fade, light classical music was allowed on radio and television. Some public concerts reappeared in the late 1980s.

Western music, films and clothing are widely available in Iran, and hip-hop can be heard on Tehran's streets, blaring from car speakers or from music shops. Bootleg videos and DVDs of films banned by the state are widely available in the black market.

Following eight years of reformist-led rule in Iran, Ahmadinejad won office in August on a platform of reverting to ultraconservative principles promoted by the revolution.

Since then, Ahmadinejad has jettisoned Iran's moderation in foreign policy and pursued a purge in the government, replacing pragmatic veterans with former military commanders and inexperienced religious hard-liners.

He also has issued stinging criticisms of Israel, called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map" and described the Nazi Holocaust as a "myth."

International concerns are high over Iran's nuclear program, with the United States accusing Tehran of pursuing an atomic weapons program. Iran denies the claims.

During his presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad also promised to confront what he called the Western cultural invasion and promote Islamic values.

The latest media ban also includes censorship of content of films.

"Supervision of content from films, TV series and their voice-overs is emphasized in order to support spiritual cinema and to eliminate trite and violence," the council said in a statement on its Web site explaining its October ruling. The council has also issued a ban on foreign movies that promote "arrogant powers," an apparent reference to the United States.

 

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The explosive growth of youthful, irreverent online diaries has alarmed Iran's hardline Government

THE MUSIC OF Eric Clapton was banned in Iran this week. Broadcasters were ordered to cease playing “decadent” western songs and stick to “fine Iranian music”. Not content with denying the Holocaust, Israel’s right to exist, and advertising hoardings featuring David Beckham, Iran’s hardline President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has now denied his people the chance to listen to Layla — cruel and unusual punishment indeed.

But if Iran, under the repressive rule of the ultraconservatives, is silencing the sound of Western pop, in another area of its culture, a wild cacophony of voices has erupted. The blogosphere is exploding. In Iran there are now more than 100,000 active blogs or weblogs, individual online diaries covering every conceivable subject, from pets to politics. Farsi is the 28th most spoken language in the world, but it now ties with French as the second most used language in the blogosphere. This is the place Iranians call “Weblogistan”: a land of noisy and irreverent free speech.

The collision between these two sides of Iran — hardline versus online — represents the latest, and most important, battle over freedom of speech. The outcome will dictate not only the shape of Iran, but also the future of the internet as a political tool, heralding a new species of protest that is entirely irrepressible.

The growth in Iranian blogging is part of a worldwide surge. In 1999, there were some 50 bloggers on the web; in January there were about 5.4 million; today, according to the blog search engine Technorati, there are more than 23 million.

There are reasons why Iran should be especially fertile ground for blogging. More than 90 per cent of the country is literate, and 70 per cent of the country’s citizens are under 30. Computer ownership is relatively high and internet cafés abound. The first Iranian blog was born in November 2001, when Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian journalist, posted instructions on how to build a simple weblog in under ten minutes. As Nasrin Alavi (a pseudonym) demonstrates in her new book, We Are Iran: the Persian Blogs, these diary sites cover the gamut: angry, sad, humorous and brave. Like all blogs they can also be self-indulgent, inaccurate, inarticulate and boring. Internet usage is growing faster in Iran than anywhere in the Muslim Middle East, and there are now more blogs in Farsi than in German, Italian, Spanish, Russian or Chinese. Apparently, since the rise of the blogs, graffiti have almost entirely vanished from the walls of Tehran’s public toilets.

With almost all Iran’s reformist newspapers closed down and many editors imprisoned, blogs offer an opportunity for dissent, discussion and dissemination of ideas that is not available in any other forum. There is wistful yearning in many Iranian blogs, and a persistent vein of anger: “I keep a weblog so that I can breath in this suffocating air,” writes one blogger. “I write so as not be lost in despair.” Blogs by Muslim women are particularly moving in their bitter portrayal of life behind the veil.

The Iranian State has done its utmost to smother the nascent Iranian blogosphere. In 2003 the Government began to take direct action against bloggers — more than 20 have been arrested, on charges ranging from “morality violations” to insulting leaders of the Islamic Republic. One blogger was sentenced to 14 years in prison for “spying and aiding foreign counter-revolutionaries”; in October, Omid Sheikhan was sentenced to a year’s jail and 124 lashes for a weblog featuring satirical political cartoons.

The regime has also reportedly brought in powerful software programs to filter the net and block access to provocative blogs. But the Government remains profoundly alarmed by a tool it cannot control. Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, the head of the Iranian judiciary, recently described the internet as a “Trojan Horse carrying enemy soldiers in its belly”. Many of Iran’s religious leaders recall how an earlier revolution was fuelled by new technology, when cassette tapes and videotapes of sermons by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were smuggled into the country, undermining the Shah and hastening his downfall.

Decentralised, informal and versatile, blogs offer a potential for secrecy, anonymity and evasion unthinkable in a hierarchical, paper-based information system. A blogger may be arrested, but once his words are out there and replicable, they are effectively immortal and invulnerable. The bloggers have proved so wily and hard to censor that the Government has even considered removing Iran from the internet entirely, by creating a national intranet that would seal off Iranians from the contaminating freedom of the world wide web.

If the Iranian Government succeeds in crushing the blogs, other intolerant regimes will take heart; but if the Iranian blogosphere continues to expand, nascent networks of free thought will follow elsewhere. Already US policymakers are exploring ways of nurturing home-grown Arabic language blogs in the Middle East to spread democratic ideals and increase pressure for change.

It is less the political content of the blogs that terrifies Iran’s Government than the mere existence of this space outside its control, where Iranians are free to say whatever they wish to one another. Here in Weblogistan they can tell jokes, flirt, mock their leaders and share music files, unencumbered by mullahs’ fiats or state decrees.

For a reader from the West, the blogs offer a vision of Iran, far from the chanting crowds, hidden women and ranting mullahs of popular imagery. As much as President Ahmadinejad may seek to turn back the clock and battle “Westoxification”, at the blog level this is a modern country. “My blog is a blank page,” writes one young Iranian blogger. “Sometimes I stretch out on this page in the nude . . . now and again I hide behind it. Occasionally I dance on it.” That may not sound like a call to arms, but in a country where the music is dying it may be the harbinger of revolution.