US and Israel Allegedly Sought Ahmadinejad as Iran Leader

Fresh questions have emerged about U.S. and Israeli efforts to destabilize the Iranian regime following claims that Israel sought to install former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power.

Ahmadinejad’s presidency from 2005 to 2013 was marked by incendiary attacks on Israel, but he recast himself as a regime critic and champion of the poor after falling out with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

It is alleged that Israel bombed a security building near his Tehran home to help him escape house arrest, though he grew uneasy about the operation.

The plans, reported by The New York Times, were widely considered implausible or disinformation from Ahmadinejad’s supporters or Israeli intelligence.

However, the episode underscores how the U.S. and Israel overestimated opposition to the regime and their own ability to topple it with airstrikes.

Facing domestic anger over rising gas prices, President Donald Trump has sought to extricate himself from the conflict but is considering more airstrikes to force Tehran to meet his terms.

Trump said Monday he delayed a fresh attack after Gulf leaders intervened, but on Tuesday he held a lengthy call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu covering potential resumption of hostilities.

Asked whether Israel could be stopped from attacking Iran, Trump told reporters Wednesday: “Netanyahu will do whatever I want him to do. He’s a great guy, To me he is a great guy.”

Trump said he wanted to see the Strait of Hormuz opened but denied being under pressure, adding: “I am in no hurry, everyone says ‘oh the midterms’, I am in no hurry. Ideally I would like to see a few people killed as opposed to a lot. We can do it either way.”

Tehran, believing its stranglehold on Western economies is tightening, refuses to meet Washington’s demands on domestic uranium enrichment and wants to delay nuclear program negotiations, focusing instead on lifting sanctions in exchange for ending its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. has mounted a counter blockade of Iran’s ports to halt oil shipments, which primarily go to China as Iran’s single largest export revenue source. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warns it will widen the conflict beyond the region if Trump resumes assaults.

Iranian media treated the New York Times report with skepticism and said the former president had not been under house arrest. At the time of initial Israeli strikes on Tehran on Feb. 28, some Iranian media reported Ahmadinejad had been killed in a strike on his home.

It later emerged that a security outpost outside his home in Narmak, northeast Tehran, was hit — an attack confirmed by satellite images. Speculation arose that Ahmadinejad would exploit the chaos to mount a power bid.

In the days after the airstrikes, official news agencies reported he suffered minor injuries but his bodyguards were killed.

Ahmadinejad would be an unlikely ally for Netanyahu given his Holocaust denial and virulently anti-Israeli policies.

Trump had made clear at the outset of the Iran attacks that he wanted to follow the Venezuela model, where U.S. troops captured leader Nicolás Maduro but left the regime in Caracas intact. Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodriguez, largely cooperates with Washington, but Ahmadinejad’s fraught relationship with Tehran’s regime makes a similar arrangement less likely.

Ahmadinejad’s authority declined markedly after he fell out with Khamenei in 2011, and a year later his rival Ali Larijani was elected parliament speaker. Their disputes centered on ministerial appointments, economic policy, and Ahmadinejad’s nationalism, including glorification of ancient Iran.

He was arrested in 2018 after criticizing the government led by his successor, Hassan Rouhani, reportedly saying: “Some of the current leaders live detached from the problems and concerns of the people, and do not know anything about the reality of society.”

Ahmadinejad has been repeatedly blocked from standing again for the presidency, including in 2024. After that, he fell largely silent and issued only mild criticism of the Israeli strikes on Iran in 2025.

In a sign of how far his views have changed, he was reported to have visited pro-Israel Hungary to give a talk last June — one of the few foreign trips since his presidency, a visit sanctioned by the government.