Ahmadinejad was born near Garmsar in the village of Aradan, in Semnan province, the fourth of seven children. His father, Ahmad, was an ironworker, grocer, barber, blacksmith, and religious person who taught the Qur'an.
Nasser Hadian, who grew up with Ahmadinejad, says he has always been pragmatic and smart -- even finishing No. 1 in his high school class.
In 1976, Ahmadinejad took Iran's national university entrance contests. He was ranked 132nd out of 400,000 participants that year, and soon enrolled in the Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) as an undergraduate student of civil engineering. He received a PhD in transportation engineering and planning from IUST in 1997. Ahmadinejad believes deeply in many things. As a young man, he took part in the country's Islamic revolution as a member of the revolutionary guards.
In 2003, elected conservative candidates from the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran to the City Council of Tehran. The Council appointed Ahmadinejad mayor.
As mayor, he reversed changes made by previous moderate and reformist mayors. He put religious emphasis on the activities of cultural centers they had founded. He also worked to improve the traffic system and put an emphasis on charity, such as distributing free soup to the poor. This son of a blacksmith was later elected president of the country by promising to give poor people a share of Iran's oil wealth.
After his election to the presidency, Ahmadinejad's resignation as the mayor of Tehran was accepted in June 2005. After two years as mayor, Ahmadinejad was one of 65 finalists for World Mayor in 2005, selected from 550 nominees, only nine of them from Asia. He was among three strong candidates for the top ten list, but his resignation made him ineligible.
Today, Ahmadinejad still lives in the old neighborhood in a small house, doing everything he can to project the image of a modest and devout man.
As of September 2009, the election results remain in dispute with both Mousavi and Ahmadinejad and their respective supporters who believe that electoral fraud occurred during the election. Ahmadinejad won 24,527,516 votes, (62.63%). In second place, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, won 13,216,411 (33.75%) of the votes. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formally endorsed Ahmadinejad as President on 3 August 2009, and Ahmadinejad was sworn in for a second term on 5 August 2009
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