TEHRAN, 30 June 2005 — Iran’s President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed his election triumph as a new revolution that could spread throughout the world, in a shift away from previously moderate post-vote rhetoric. “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,” the IRNA agency quoted the ultra-conservative as saying.
“The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end,” he said, in an apparent reference to Iran’s archfoe the United States. “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world,” he said. “In one night, the martyrs strode down a path of 100 years,” he added. Ahmadinejad has previously been at pains to present a moderate face to the world, avoiding religious rhetoric at his post-election news conference in favor of pledges of friendship and compassion to all at home and abroad.
However, these latest comments were made to a markedly different audience - the families of over 70 victims, including several MPs and the former chief justice, killed in a 1981 attack at the headquarters of the once powerful post-revolution Islamic Republic Party.
The tone of the remarks harks back to the first years after 1979 revolution, when the country’s leaders frequently pledged to take the revolution beyond Iran. Ahmadinejad has frequently extolled the “purity” of those early days.
However, Iran subsequently abandoned attempts to export the revolution, which the regime believes prompted Western countries and most Arab states to side with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its 1980-1988 war with the Islamic republic.
