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 during Saturday’s strikes inside Iran, New York Post reported.
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 home.
Ahmadinejad served as Iran’s sixth president from 2005 to 2013, rising from relative obscurity as mayor of Tehran to defeat establishment figure Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in a surprise 2005 runoff.
Critics at home and abroad described him as a confrontational ideologue whose economic management fueled inflation and whose rhetoric deepened Iran’s international isolation.
