When he was president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was a “lie and a nythical claim“:
“Why should everyone be forced to accept the opinion of just a few on a historic event?” he asked host Steve Inskeep.
Ahmadinejad stirred up controversy again last week by using a national televised speech in Iran to call the Holocaust a “lie and a mythical claim.”
He told Inskeep: “I’m not a historian. Most certainly, I’ve read a lot of books about this issue, and that is why I have questions about it. My questions are very clear ones. We should allow researchers to examine all sorts of questions because it’s quite clear that when they do, they will reach different conclusions” [Kevin Whitelaw, “Ahmadinejad: Holocaust ‘Opinion of Just a Few’,” NPR, 2009.09.25].
Ahmadinejad stole Iran’s 2009 election to stay in power and crushed the protests that followed that electoral crime. Ahmadinejad lied about that crackdown:
Asked about the many democracy protesters who remain jailed after Iranian security forces violently broke up demonstrations following the country’s election in June, Ahmadinejad insisted that Iranians were free to criticize their government.
“In Iran, no one is in prison because of opposing Ahmadinejad,” he said. “In Iran, there is freedom and people can speak their minds.”
Thousands of people were detained by Iranian security forces in the wake of the dramatic June protests, in which dozens of protesters were also killed. Many of the jailed demonstrators were released, with officials saying that fewer than 200 remain in custody [Whitelaw, 2029.09.25].
Ahmadinejad drove the Iranian nuclear program that Trump has waged illegal war to obliterate. Ahmadinejad supported the Islamic regime’s call to destroy Israel.
The logical conclusion Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu drew from that history: Ahmadinejad is the perfect guy to lead Iran after we kill Ayatollah Khameini:
The New York Times, citing official sources, reported that the US and Israel had identified the anti-western and anti-Zionist former president as the person they wanted to lead Iran after the regime’s presumed collapse in the face of their military onslaught [Robert Tait, “Trump May See Himself in Ahmadinejad but Having Him Lead Iran Was a Perplexing Idea,” The Guardian, 2026.05.20].
But they messed that plan up right away:
Hours after an Israeli airstrike at the start of the Iran war killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, another targeted the home of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an Iranian politician who had long descended into irrelevance in the country he once presided over.
…The strike on Ahmadinejad’s home was meant to kill the guards confining him under house arrest and thus free the next leader of Iran. Instead it injured Ahmadinejad, who has since disappeared from view and is said to have been angered by the attempt to install him.
…An associate of Ahmadinejad told The New York Times that the airstrike was a “jail break” and that the US had come to view Ahmadinejad as capable of running “Iran’s political, social and military situation” [Samer Al-Atrush, “US and Israel ‘Wanted Ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Run Iran’,” The Times, 2026.05.20].
America has never had a stupider, more incompetent President.