Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an Iranian politician and former President of Iran whose eight-year service as the sixth President of Iran across 2005–2013 produced one of the foundational figures of early-21st-century Middle-East-and-Iran international politics. He was born Mahmoud Sabaghian on October 28, 1956, in Aradan, Semnan, Iran, into a working-class Iranian Shia-Muslim family. His father Ahmad Sabaghian was an Aradan-area Shia-Muslim ironworker (who relocated the family to Tehran when Mahmoud was a young child), and his mother Khanom Sabaghian was a homemaker. The family adopted the surname Ahmadinejad in the 1960s.

His education at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran (B.S. in Civil Engineering, 1976; Ph.D. in Transportation Engineering and Planning, 1997) launched his early-career path. His ongoing 1976–1979 university student-political-activism career across the Iran University of Science and Technology — particularly across his ongoing 1979 founding-membership in the Office for Strengthening Unity (which organized the November 1979 Iranian-student takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, although Ahmadinejad's specific involvement in the Iranian-student-hostage-crisis remains disputed) — produced his early-career Iranian Islamic-Republic political-public-profile.

His subsequent 1980–1991 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps military career across the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War, his 1992–1993 service as the Iranian Governor of Maku County, and his 1993–1997 service as the Iranian Governor of Ardabil Province produced his early-career Iranian provincial-government public profile. His May 3, 2003 first Tehran-area Mayor election victory and his subsequent 2003–2005 service as the Mayor of Tehran launched his 2005 Iranian Presidential election campaign.

His June 24, 2005 second-round Iranian Presidential election runoff victory over former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (with 62% of total Iranian Presidential second-round votes) — and his subsequent August 3, 2005 Iranian Presidential inauguration — launched his 2005–2013 Iranian-government leadership.

His 2005–2013 Iranian Presidential service produced multiple foundational early-21st-century Middle-East-and-Iran political-public-profile events — particularly his ongoing 2005–2013 international-controversial public-statements regarding Israel and the Holocaust, his ongoing 2005–2013 Iranian nuclear-program development (which produced multiple international UN Security Council sanctions resolutions across 2006–2010), and the controversial June 12, 2009 Iranian Presidential election (across which Ahmadinejad defeated Mir-Hossein Mousavi, although the election results were disputed and produced the 2009–2010 Iranian Green Movement protest movement). He retired from the Iranian Presidency on August 3, 2013. He has been with Iranian homemaker Azam al-Sadat Farahi since 1980, and the couple has three children.

His name Mahmoud derives from the Arabic Maḥmūd meaning "praiseworthy" — one of the names of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Mahmoud has been climbing in American naming since the 2000s.