He won first the elections in June, 2005. He is a hardliner as compared to his predecessor Mohammed Khatami, who was a liberal.
Ahmedinejad has almost declared Iran’s intention to go nuclear. The explosion of a nuclear device on October 9, 2006, by North Korea further emboldened Iran to jump onto the nuclear bandwagon.
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Iran insists that its nuclear intentions are entirely peaceful. It needs nuclear power, it says, to save its vast oil reserves for export. Yet its energy excuse does not add up; the gas routinely flares off from its oilfields could provide electricity more cheaply than the nuclear reactors. New plants are in addition to the one Russia is already building at the Gulf port of Bushehr.
In a volatile region even just the enduring suspicion of Iran’s nuclear intention may tempt others i.e. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, to reconsider their non-nuclear vows. Ahmedinejad is a staunch opponent of the state of Israel. He maintains that holocaust never occurred; it was merely a “myth” and would like the state of Israel to be exterminated.
Image Source: theiranproject.com
Iran has been supplying missiles and rockets to the Hizbollah guerrillas and the same were fired with deadly accuracy on the towns of Israel in July, 2006, during the Lebanon crisis. The oil revenues have filled coffers of Iran and it can effectively influence the politics of the region. If a Shiite state is created out of Iraq, it would be aligned with Iran and dependent for support and succor.
It is now an open secret that disgraced Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan supplied the nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Ahmedinejad has been attending various Islamic conferences in the world and is very vocal in his opposition to the United States, the Christian world and Israel.
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The Iranian elections held in 2009 were highly contentious. A remarkable feature of the elections was the rioting resorted to by the public at large against the fraud during elections. The major contestant Mousavi protested against the rigging of the elections as lakhs of people poured into the streets of Teheran and other major towns chanting slogans against Ahmedinejad and for the first time they questioned dictates of the Supreme leader of the 1978-79 Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
He was even called a great satin. All efforts to dissuade Iran from going ahead with its nuclear policy have failed. Hectic diplomatic activity took place in November 2009 when efforts were made to allow Iran to ship its uranium to Russia or France for enrichment so that a tab could be kept on the Iranian nuclear aspirations.
The Chinese are deriving full advantage of Iran’s isolation and have already signed some major oil deals with it. India is also belatedly making amends and endeavouring to end Iran’s isolation by engaging in Indo-Iranian economic deals without mentioning of Iran – Pak – India oil pipeline.