Israel wooed former Iran president Ahmadinejad

Israel engaged in a multi-year effort to recruit and re-install as leader Iran’s former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The New York Times reported Monday, citing US officials and sources with knowledge of the failed Israeli plot.

The campaign, which culminated in a strike on Ahmadinejad’s bodyguards to free him from house arrest on the first day of the US-Israel attack on Iran in February, included a meeting with then-Mossad chief David Barnea on the sidelines of an academic conference in Hungary, the report said.

According to a separate report in Haaretz, also published Monday, the Mossad plan, which began sometime in 2022, was briefly interrupted by the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught and the ensuing Gaza war.

However, as the war in Gaza was at its peak, the plan accelerated, with Barnea directly overseeing the effort to install Ahmadinejad in Iran, that report said.

A car driven by Mossad officials secreted the former president away to a safe house after February 28’s initial Israeli airstrikes, when supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed, but Ahmadinejad later left the safe house after growing disillusioned with Israel’s plan to install him, the report said.

Ahmadinejad’s current status is unclear, according to the report.

He was last seen briefly surrounded by guards — masked and wearing a heavy coat — at the funeral for slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and is believed to be in IRGC custody over his ties with Israeli intelligence.

It was his first public appearance since this year’s US-Israeli war with Iran began.