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Mossad sought Ahmadinejad
Haaretz reported a Mossad plot to install former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, describing how Mossad agents brought him on board and how the effort created a “shock within Netanyahu's cabinet.”
i24NEWS, citing The New York Times, said Israel maintained “years-long secret contacts” with Ahmadinejad and planned to install him as Iran’s leader before the operation collapsed.
The Guardian said the recruiting effort began in 2022 and continued even after Israel became engaged in a campaign in Gaza against Hamas, a key Iranian ally.
The Guardian also reported that David Barnea, then head of the Mossad, travelled to Hungary to meet Ahmadinejad after he was invited to speak at Ludovika University at a climate conference the year before.
The Times of Israel said the campaign culminated in a strike on Ahmadinejad’s bodyguards to free him on the first day of the US-Israel attack on Iran in February, and it described a meeting with then-Mossad chief David Barnea on the sidelines of an academic conference in Hungary.
Budapest meetings and safe house
The Guardian said the Mossad informed the CIA that it had been in contact with Ahmadinejad after Barnea’s meeting, and it described Ahmadinejad as now believed to be in the custody of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) according to The New York Times.
The Times of Israel reported that Hungary invited Ahmadinejad to a 2024 climate change conference in Budapest, and it said the report described the invitation as a cover for Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad to meet with Mossad agents.
The Times of Israel also said Ahmadinejad was last seen briefly surrounded by guards at the funeral for slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei, and it added that he is believed to be in IRGC custody over his ties with Israeli intelligence.
The New York Post reported that Ahmadinejad is being held by the IRGC’s intelligence wing after he left a safe house run by Israel’s Mossad, and it said he was 69-year-old.
The Week said the New York Times claimed Ahmadinejad met Mossad chief in Hungary in June 2025, days before the 12-day war broke out between Israel and Iran, and it said Israel hit Ahmadinejad’s residence to remove him from house arrest.
War stakes and legitimacy
BBC reported that Iranian television cut its normally scheduled programming after midnight on Sunday and confirmed that Mojtaba Khamenei, Ali Khamenei's son, had been chosen to succeed his father, with the announcement coming a week after Ali Khamenei was killed in the first wave of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran on Esfand 9.
BBC said the selection of the leader is conducted behind closed doors and rests with the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of Shiite clerics tasked with supervising the leadership and selecting a successor when the office is vacant.
The Guardian said Ahmadinejad was upset about the “frantic” rescue mission and disillusioned about the plan to install him in power, and it reported that he left the safe house under “mysterious circumstances.”
The Week said Ahmadinejad was disillusioned with Israel’s plan to install him at the helm, and it described his current status as unclear in the New York Times report.
Haaretz and i24NEWS framed the effort as a covert attempt to recruit and then install Ahmadinejad, but the BBC’s account of Mojtaba Khamenei’s succession underscored how leadership decisions in Iran are being made under wartime conditions.
