Was an USsraeli agent positioned and expected to take over Iran?
That question is coming up when reading a new New York Times story that is making the rounds.
Early War Goal Was to Install Hard Line Former President as Iran’s Leader (archived) – NY Times, May 20 2026
An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, U.S. officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power.
The gist of the story:
It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views.
But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.
Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.
There are many questions which let one doubt the veracity of the story.
Ahmadinejad, who has been president of Iran from 2005 to 2013, is a bygone politician. He has no institutional following and is openly despised by many people in Iran. There is no chance that he could again be holding a leading position in Iran. Neither the state institutions nor the law would allow that.
Even if that has been a plan why would the Trump administration leak it now? Why would Amadinejad, an USraeli asset if the story is right, be outed as a traitor?
Why was his house bombed? Ahmadinejad was under house arrest and had to be freed by bombing him?
But the NY Times also mentions that he has traveled a lot:
In the past few years Mr. Ahmadinejad has made trips out of Iran that further fueled speculation.
In 2023, he traveled to Guatemala and in 2024 and 2025 he went to Hungary, trips detailed by New Lines magazine.
The New Lines magazine (a dubious outlet in my view) piece does not mention any house arrest of Ahmadinejad. Is there any evidence that his movement had indeed been restricted?
The whole Israeli plan, if real, was lunatic in the first place:
At the outset, Israel envisioned the war unfolding in several phases, starting with air assaults by the United States and Israel plus the killing of Iran’s supreme leaders and the mobilization of Kurds to fight Iranian forces, according to two Israeli defense officials familiar with the operational planning.
Then, the Israeli plan foresaw a combination of influence campaigns carried out by Israel and the Kurdish invasion creating political instability in Iran and a sense that the regime was losing control. In a third stage, the regime, under intense political pressure and the weight of damage to key infrastructure like electricity, would collapse, allowing for what the Israelis referred to as an “alternative government” to be established.
If that indeed was a plan it certainly wasn’t a viable one.
But it may have been the story that was successfully sold to Trump.
The ‘U.S. officials’ who are leaking these claims may well intend to blame Israel for convincing Trump to launch this war.
That is another aspect I find hard to buy.