Word: mohammad
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...Emerged as the leading challenger to Ahmadinejad after former President Mohammad Khatami, the leading moderate candidate, dropped out of the race in March, explaining that he did not want two reformist candidates to split the opposition vote. (Others have suggested his exit was spurred by fears of assassination if he remained in the race...
...factor in changing the equation appears to have been Ahmadinejad's character assassinations of leading political figures and, especially, his insinuation that Mousavi's wife, Professor Zahra Rahnavard, had improperly gained her academic job. "That may have been the turning point," said former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi. "He insulted Iranians' sense of decency...
...There is a bipolarity in Iranian politics right now," says Mohammad Atrianfar, a political analyst in Tehran. "The change they were seeking in the U.S. is happening here too. People are trying to unseat Ahmadinejad." There are also plenty of people who want the current President to stay, and Ahmadinejad has styled himself as the candidate of change itself, the anticorruption revolutionary the Islamic republic needs for its revival. But while an Ahmadinejad victory would mean more of the same populist economics and antagonism toward a "hostile" U.S., a Mousavi upset could herald the revival of reformist politics in Iran...
...Ahmadinejad came out swinging in his 10-minute opening statement, charging that his government had been the target of unprecedented slander, not only from Moussavi, but also from previous Presidents such as Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami. These men, said Ahmadinejad, had led Iran away from the path of the 1979 Islamic revolution, and were part of a current "that saw itself as the owner of the nation, of the revolution, rulers of the people." (See pictures of the long shadow of Ayatullah Khomeini...
...cloaking himself in the mantle of anticorruption campaigner, Ahmadinejad appeared to escape the burden of incumbency. "Although he has all the means of the country at his disposal, Ahmadinejad's aim was to present himself as the underdog last night, and he succeeded to some extent," former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi commented. "He showed that in order to gain a few more votes, he is willing to put in question the legitimacy of the entire Islamic Republic...