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Iran's new president declares worldwide 'Islamic revolution'
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SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Iran's president-elect has proclaimed an Islamic
revolution of global proportions.
Mahmood Ahmadinejad said his election coincided with what he termed a new
Islamic revolution.
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An American hostage outside the U.S. Embassy in Teheran, on Nov. 9, 1979. The man at right has been identified as Iran's president-elect. AP
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"The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world,"
Ahmadinejad said. "In one night, the martyrs strode down a path of 100
years."
Ahmadinejad, who did not elaborate, was speaking to the families of
those killed in a 1981 attack at the headquarters of the Islamic Republic
Party, Middle East Newsline reported.
The Teheran mayor has served as a senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps, responsible for the nation's missile and nuclear weapons programs, and has been identified as a suspect in the killing of Kurdish
dissidents in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The 49-year-old Ahmadinejad, who participated in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Teheran, in 1979, was regarded as the most anti-Western of the presidential candidates. On June 24, he defeated Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who headed the Expediency Council, the regime's watchdog over what had been a reformist-dominated parliament.
"Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen
and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God
wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world," Ahmadinejad was quoted
by the official Iranian news agency as saying. "The era of oppression,
hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end."
The speech marked the first time since the late 1980s that an Iranian
president vowed to export Islamic insurgency throughout the world.
Allies of Ahmadinejad said the president-elect, who takes office in
August, would seek to revive the principles of the Islamic revolution in
1978. They said Ahmadinejad would also seek to impose Islamic behavior in
public, including strict enforcement of a dress code.
"Islamic and revolutionary culture have been neglected in the past
years," Iranian parliamentarian Mohammad Taqi Rahbar said.
Iran has been cited as the leading financier of groups that appear on
the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations. Iran's leading
clients have been the Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, both sponsored by Teheran, as well as Hamas and the Syrian-aligned
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
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