i have read various pieces by dr mehdi khaz'ali and listened to various interviews with him and must say that he comes over as a fantasist he just says things that some people badly want to hear and that seems to be the only thing that keeps him afloat in the media regarding mr ahmadinejad not having served in the war it is not true but from a technical point of view mr khaz'ali's story may contain some element of truth the fact is that mr ahmadinejad was not fighting as a regular army soldier or officer but was working party as a military logistic engineer and partly as a military intelligence officer from behind enemy's line if my memory is not failing during the war years he spent some time in kirkuk iraq amongst members of the patriotic union of kurdistan or kurdistan democratic party of iraq both groups were fighting alongside iran against saddam hossein the fact that after the war he i e mr ahmadinejad became the deputy to governor general of maku and khoy west azarbaijan province has a sizeable kurdish population and later advisor to governor general of kurdistan have direct relationship to his war time experience in iraqi kurdistan thus indeed mr mohsen rezai may not have been technically wrong in saying that mr ahmadinejad has not been at the front assuming that indeed the alleged statement is due to mr rezai but to say that mr ahmadinejad has lied about his war efforts is just a false and defamatory statement let us assume for a moment that mr ahmadinejad has lied about his war efforts is it at all conceivable that a young man from tehran would get so early on so high up in the highest administrative offices of maku khoy and kurdistan from all places as i said earlier mehdi khaz'ali is just a fantasist who seems to believe in his own fantasies there are some videos on youtube in which he says things that no one in his position could possibly know