Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s ex-president who said ‘Israel must be wiped off the map,’ killed in Israeli airstrikes
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — a polarizing hardliner who became the face of Tehran’s nuclear defiance and incendiary anti-Israel rhetoric — was reportedly killed in Israeli airstrikes at the outset of the military operation inside Iran.
A report by the Israeli media outlet Ma’ariv stated that Ahmadinejad was under house arrest at the time and was killed in a targeted strike on his residence.
Critics at home and abroad described him as a confrontational ideologue whose economic management fueled inflation and whose rhetoric deepened Iran’s international isolation.
During his tenure, the United Nations Security Council imposed multiple rounds of sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program, intensifying Tehran’s economic isolation.
Ahmadinejad became especially notorious in the West for his rhetoric toward Israel and his comments about the Holocaust.
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