Iran's Putin?

"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an obscure figure when he was appointed mayor of Tehran in the spring of 2003.

He was not much better known when he entered the presidential election campaign.

He reportedly spent no money on his campaign - but he was backed by powerful conservatives who used their network of mosques to mobilise support for him" (full profile here).

"Iran's Putin" occurs to me as a nice soundbite, but the differences between revolutionary Iran and the (post) Soviet/ Russian situation are surely more significant than the similarities.