Bbc news profile mahmoud ahmadinejad biography
By John Simpson |
As soon as I saw a picture of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's new president, I knew there was something faintly familiar about him.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the first non-cleric to become president |
And it was not because he was mayor of Tehran, because, like many other Western journalists, I have been barred from visiting Iran in recent years.
But in the years soon after Iran's Islamic Revolution, I met him and interviewed him.
He was the kind of person you don't forget - intense, articulate, and very fierce in his opinions.
Looking back 20 years, it seemed to me I must have met him at the former US embassy, which had been taken over by revolutionary students some years earlier; but after two decades precise memories fade, and I can't be absolutely certain.
Unfortunately the television rushes, which would have made it all clear, haven't been kept in the BBC archives.
Several former hostages from the e