http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/front2453552.1027777777.html
Iran's new president declares worldwide 'Islamic revolution'
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 is displayed to a crowd outside the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, on Nov. 9, 1979. The terrorist at right has been identified as Mahmood Ahmadinejad, the new President of Iran.AP --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"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.