Free Republic

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. 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...

The £400 million palace of Turkey’s President Erdogan is the biggest in the world. It is also a monstrosity. Thirty times the size of the White House, all the seats of government of Turkey’s Nato allies could be contained inside its vast marble halls and endless corridors. No wonder the sprawling modernist structure is compared to the People’s Palace built by Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. It actually looks more like a massive public lavatory. Saddam himself would blanch at the silk wallpaper in the bathrooms, the cabinets displaying gold inlaid glasses that cost £250 each, and the 63 lifts. The...