Saddam hussein mahmoud ahmadinejad biography

After his election as president of the Islamic Republic of Iran on June 24, 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (born 1956) emerged as one of the world's most controversial, and in some quarters most feared, political leaders.

With a hard-line attitude and a devout, almost mystical Islamic faith forged partly in Iran's earlier conflicts with Iraq and with the United States, Ahmadinejad defied Western demands that Iran halt the development of its nuclear energy program, which in the view of many Western leaders was intended to put Iran on the path toward acquisition of nuclear weapons.

That possibility alarmed no one more than the leaders of Israel, whose legitimacy as a state Ahmadinejad repeatedly questioned. According to U.S. News & World Report as well as other news outlets, he even stated that "Israel must be wiped off the map." Ahmadinejad had critics within Iran as well, but he was a charismatic politician with a strong base of support at home, especial