Iranian presidential elections in June 2005 brought a surprise victory to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and an end to an uncertain era of reform in the Islamic theocracy. Ahmadinejad, the conservative mayor of Tehran, won 62 percent of the vote in a run-off election with the favored candidate and a former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

"This is the beginning of a new movement," Ahmadinejad said after casting his vote.

Ahmadinejad was a little-known politician until Tehran's conservative city council appointed him mayor in 2003. In office, he gained a reputation for rolling back reforms enacted by moderate and reformist officials, moving to close fast-food restaurants, instituting separate elevators for men and women in municipal offices, and requiring male city employees to have beards and wear long sleeves.

During his presidential campaign, Ahmadinejad was backed by powerful conservatives and second-generation revolutionaries known as the Abadgaran, or Developers, who have a strong influence in the Iranian parliament. Ahmadinejad also is widely believed to have the unspoken endorsement of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei.

Ahmadinejad took office Aug. 6, 2005, replacing reformist Mohammad Khatami who was elected by an overwhelming majority in 1997 and 2001, but whose power to follow through with reforms was severely checked by the supreme leader and the Guardian Council.

In Iran's complicated hybrid government, the supreme leader, not the president, controls the military and makes final decisions on security matters. The structure grants few exclusive powers to the president, the most influential being his appointment of a 21-member cabinet that must be confirmed by the parliament. Ahmadinejad nominated his cabinet in June but the parliament, or majlis, withheld votes of confidence from four candidates close to Ahmadinejad, signaling possible hesitations about the new president within his own government.

Ahmadinejad's presidency got off to a rocky start after allegations surfaced that he participated in the 1979 student-led hostage crisis at the American Embassy in Tehran that led to an end of U.S.-Iranian diplomatic ties and strict sanctions against Iran.

According to Aljazeera.net, an Arab news Web site, Ahmadinejad joined the ultraconservative faction of the Office for Strengthening Unity, the radical student group responsible for the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis. The site reported that Ahmadinejad attended planning meetings for takeover and may have lobbied for a simultaneous takeover of the Soviet Embassy. Ahmadinejad has denied involvement in the hostage crisis.

The new president also took office as Iran faced increased suspicion over its uranium enrichment program that some fear could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons. Nuclear talks with France, Britain and Germany have stalled and in September, the U.N. nuclear watchdog group, the International Atomic Energy Agency, voted to refer Iran to the Security Council for violating the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

"He certainly has adopted a much harder line on these negotiations and was critical of them in the past. But this is such an important issue that I think the major decisions will be made at the level of the supreme leadership rather than at his level," Shaul Bakhash, a history professor at George Mason University and a former journalist in Iran, told the NewsHour.

While Ahmadinejad may have limited control within the Iranian government, foreign officials take his statements more seriously. In September 2005, he delivered a fervent anti-American speech at a U.N. summit in New York. The following month, Ahmadinejad said at a student program that Israel should be "wiped off the map" evoking sharp criticism from world leaders, including a unanimous condemnation from the U.N. Security Council.

"What we see with Ahmadinejad is a reversion to the kind of rhetoric and language that Iran used publicly in the past but did not during, say, the Khatami presidency," said Bakhash. "He is a threat not in the sense that Iran is going to attack the West but clearly he has exacerbated relations in a very severe way between Iran and the Europeans and the West."

Ahmadinejad was born in 1956 in Garmsar, a neighborhood southeast of Tehran, as the fourth of seven children born to a blacksmith. He holds a Ph.D. in engineering and traffic transportation planning from Tehran's University of Science and Technology. He is the first non-cleric to be elected president of Iran in 24 years.

After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Ahmadinejad voluntarily joined the Revolutionary Guard. He is also reported to have served in covert operations during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

-- Compiled by Anna Shoup for the Online NewsHour