❓WHAT HAPPENED: Former Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may have survived the joint-U.S.-Israeli decapitation strikes targeting Iran’s political and military leadership this past weekend.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian military and political leaders, Patrick Bet-David, Israel, and the United States.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Reports of Ahmadinejad’s possible survival surfaced on Monday and Tuesday.
💬KEY QUOTE: “Their team is telling us, this is not true, that he is not killed, he is alive. They [Israel] hit down the street from where he was at, and they didn’t kill him.” — Patrick Bet-David
🎯IMPACT: Several claims of his survival emerged on Monday and Tuesday, though no conclusive evidence that Ahmadinejad is alive has been presented.
Former Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, may have survived the joint-U.S.-Israeli decapitation strikes targeting Iran’s political and military leadership this past weekend. Several claims of his survival emerged on Monday and Tuesday, though no conclusive evidence that Ahmadinejad is alive has been presented.
On Monday, podcaster and Iranian-American businessman Patrick Bet-David contradicted claims made by the New York Post that Ahmadinejad had been killed in an Israeli airstrike. According to Bet-David, he had been attempting to record a podcast episode with Ahmadinejad—best known for his hardline views against the U.S. and Israel as well as his social commentary about American sports—for at least a year, with frequent communication with the former Iranian president’s staff.
“I got an update from his team, I’m telling you what his team told me,” Bet-David said, revealing, “Their team is telling us, this is not true, that he is not killed, he is alive. They [Israel] hit down the street from where he was at, and they didn’t kill him.”
“Is Ahmadinejad Alive?” – Ex-Iranian President Reported DEAD After Israeli Airstrikes pic.twitter.com/QJX6CLdgRD
— PBD Podcast (@PBDsPodcast) March 2, 2026
This claim was repeated by unnamed sources to Iran International on Tuesday, insisting that Ahmadinejad was in fact alive and not dead. Ahmadinejad, who has largely been absent from the Iranian political scene for over a decade, is—or was—a member of the Principlists faction. This faction is heavily aligned with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and proponents of building nuclear weapons.
A former mayor of Tehran and engineer, Ahmadinejad was infamous during his tenure as Iran’s president for leading “Death to America” chants. However, his post-political career saw the former president commenting on Western sports, including lamenting that former National Football League (NFL) quarterback Colin Kaepernick failed to make a team roster and cheering on the University of Michigan football team. “With a hard work ethic, Inshallah the U of M will return to its glory days,” Ahmadinejad wrote in an October 2018 post on X (formerly Twitter). In 2024, Michigan would win the College Football National Championship.
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