Another experience that had a profound effect on the development of the young Ahmadinejad was serving with the Revolutionary Guards on the front line of the war with Iraq during the 1980s. For most of the war he served with the engineers on the Kurdish border. Although his role in the actual fighting was limited, he nevertheless made many important contacts within the Guards, which would later make significant contributions to his rise to power.
Ahmadinejad appears to have been inspired to involve himself directly in Iranian politics following the takeover of the country by the reform-minded, pro-democracy moderates in the mid-1990s.

The surprise success of Muhammad Khatami in the 1997 presidential election had a particular effect in galvanising Ahmadinejad and other conservative hardliners loyal to Ali Khamenei, who believed that many of the founding principles of Khomeini's revolution, particularly its adherence to the strict adherence of Islamic law, were being abandoned. Khatami, a mild-mannered cleric who had twice served as minister of guidance and culture, had previously clashed with the religious establishment by allowing Iran's media and entertainment industry too much freedom. Khatami's election was mainly a protest vote against the economic incompetence and mismanagement displayed during Rafsanjani's eight-year tenure, but the appointment of an Iranian president who genuinely sought to improve relations with the West and move away from the autocratic regime that had dominated the country since the revolution was too much for the hardliners, who set about actively undermining his government.

By now, Ahmadinejad was teaching traffic management at his old university in Tehran and, outraged by Khatami's reform agenda, became politically active, joining the conservative faction of Tehran's city council. Ahmadinejad's links with the Revolutionary Guards, which had become one of the country's most powerful institutions, proved to be an important asset in developing the future president's political profile. Khatami's re-election in June 2001, when the reformists were still able to muster a majority of the vote, served only to encourage the hardliners in their efforts to destroy the reform movement. In 2003, backed by Khamenei and the rest of the hardline conservative establishment, Ahmadinejad secured the all-important position of mayor of Tehran, which (Boris Johnson take note) he was able to use as a launchpad for high office two years later.