Agents from the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad) are reportedly recruiting former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, considered Israel’s archenemy, to overthrow the current government and install him as the new leader of the Persian country, reports the New York Times.
However, according to the newspaper report, the plan failed. During the first days of the United States and Israel’s war against Iran, which began on February 28, an Israeli airstrike hit the compound where Ahmadinejad was staying, targeting the building of his bodyguards and his armored vehicle. After the offensive, according to four senior Iranian officials, a black Peugeot driven by Mossad agents picked up the former president of Iran and took him to a safe house.
But the former Iranian leader was upset by the frantic rescue operation and appeared disillusioned with the Israeli plan to return him to power, according to people familiar with what happened, the American newspaper adds. Ahmadinejad was not seen in public again until last Monday (06/07), when he made a brief appearance in the funeral procession of the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Thus, four senior Iranian officials told the NOW that Ahmadinejad is in the custody of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence service, under house arrest, now that Iran has become aware of much of his interactions with Israel.
Israeli officials have not commented publicly on the plan to install Ahmadinejad as Iran’s leader, which was part of a broader attempt to overthrow the current government.
The regime change plan involved a “very, very unique sequence of special operations that had to happen,” Tamir Hayman, former head of intelligence for the Israel Defense Forces, told the talk show Firing Lineyes PBSin May, after the New York Times revealed details of Ahmadinejad’s role in the plan. “And Ahmadinejad was part of that sequence.”
Israel’s decision to align with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows a turnaround, as he is known for defending Iran’s nuclear program and criticizing Zionist policies.
Contact and recruitment
It is unclear when Israeli agents first attempted to recruit Ahmadinejad. Iranian officials said there was at least some contact during a trip Ahmadinejad took to Guatemala in 2023 to attend an environmental conference. The invitation came from the government of Guatemala, a country that maintains closer diplomatic relations with Israel than most Latin American countries.
In early 2024, a senior Hungarian government official told the rector, professor Gergely Deli, that the Ludovika University of Public Service, located in Budapest, should organize a conference on climate change and extend an invitation to the former president of Iran.
According to the American newspaper, the official told Delhi that the conference was just a cover for Ahmadinejad to have secret talks in Budapest with Israeli intelligence agents.
Thus, Ahmadinejad visited the institution in 2024 and again in 2025, part of a long-running Israeli effort to groom him as an intelligence officer who, when the time came, could be installed as Iran’s new leader, according to U.S. and Iranian officials familiar with the operation who spoke on condition of anonymity. NOW.
Former US officials also reported that the then head of Israeli espionage, David Barnea, even traveled to the Hungarian capital in 2024 to meet in person with Ahmadinejad and added that the Mossad notified the CIA that it had contacted the former leader.
Hungary, then led by right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, had perhaps closer ties to Israel than any other European nation, and Orbán and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made frequent trips to their respective countries. Netanyahu delivered a speech in April 2025 at Ludovika University, where he received an award for service to the community.
In recent years, according to North American authorities reporting to the NOWTel Aviv secretly paid Ahmadinejad to cover lodging and travel costs, and Israeli agents met with him abroad on several occasions, including during his trips to Budapest.
The newspaper reports that Iranian bodyguards from the Revolutionary Guard’s Ansar unit, who accompanied Ahmadinejad on all of his foreign trips, reported that on at least two occasions he managed to break away from his security team and disappear for long meetings during the June 2025 trip. In a report on the trip, the bodyguards said they confronted Ahmadinejad about their disappearances and that he told them he was meeting with university professors, according to two members of the Iranian IRGC and an intelligence officer.
Source: www.brasildefato.com.br
