Israel engaged in a multi-year effort to recruit and install as Iran’s leader former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, The New York Times reports. 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 Mossad chief David Barnea on the sidelines of an academic conference in Hungary, it says.
A car secreted the former president away to a safe house after that attack, but he later left the safe house after growing disillusioned with Israel’s plan to install him, The Times reports. Ahmadinejad’s current status is unclear, according to the report. He was 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.
Hungary invited Ahmadinejad to a 2024 climate change conference in Budapest to allow him to meet Barnea, The Times reports. According to the report, Ludovika University of Public Service Rector Gergely Deli was asked by a senior Hungarian official to invite Ahmadinejad, telling him the invitation was a cover for the Holocaust-denying former president to meet with Mossad agents.
In recent years, he became a critic of the regime led by Khamenei, accusing senior officials of corruption and poor governance. Ahmadinejad began presenting a more moderate stance publicly, and established himself as an advocate for regular Iranians. According to the paper, Ahmadinejad eventually accepted that he could not return to power under the current regime and saw foreign intervention as his path back to leadership. A close associate tells The Times that he saw himself as a reformer, and that Iran would recognize Israel when he came to power.
He was also concerned that the US and Israel would impose an outsider, and that the country would descend into chaos. Israel had contact with Ahmadinejad during a 2023 trip to an environmental conference in Guatemala, The Times reports. The former president was initially stopped from flying by Iranian security services, but social media posts and a sit-in convinced authorities to let him fly.
Ahmadinejad met with Israeli agents in Budapest a second time in June 2025, days before Israel carried out the opening strikes of its 12-day campaign against the regime, according to the newspaper. He twice managed to shake his IRGC bodyguards during the trip. Israel paid Ahmadinejad for housing and travel, according to the report. Israel’s plan to topple the regime, which included a Kurdish uprising, failed, and the regime remains firmly in control of the country.
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