A New York Times report says the U.S. and Israel hoped to install former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s leader. The account reopens questions about how past protests were handled, how U.S.-Israel rhetoric shaped sanctions, and what the stakes
On a day when the war’s opening moments were already set in motion, a New York Times report landed like a match thrown onto dry paper: the U.S. and Israel allegedly hoped to install former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s leader.
The report immediately inflamed a debate that has simmered for years—one that, for many Iranians, has never been theoretical. Ahmadinejad’s own past is threaded through the country’s most punishing political chapter in living memory.
In 2009, Iranians rose up against a stolen election in what became known as the Green Movement. It was met with violent force from Iran’s security forces. and Ahmadinejad’s role in that era remains central to how people interpret his later political value. Even then. he dismissed the protests as something trivial—first as “emotions after a soccer match. ” and in another instance as “dirt and dust.” To critics. those remarks disqualified him as a symbol of democracy.
After the Times report, the same history is now being pulled forward. Ahmadinejad had mostly faded from the center of events until he reemerged into headlines on Tuesday. The Times report says Israel targeted a building on Ahmadinejad’s street shortly after the war began—an action described as intended to “free” him from what the report portrays as either house arrest or strict monitoring of his movements.
If the attempted takeover was real. the story raises a brutal question: what was the plan supposed to be if Ahmadinejad survived and could move?. The report’s framing points toward a leadership switch after the deaths of Iran’s top officials—“in the opening hour of the war. ” the Times says Israel killed Iran’s supreme leader.
But the premise runs into the reality of how power works inside Iran’s security establishment. The report suggests that after killing top leadership. including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals. Ahmadinejad could somehow gain support among the security forces’ senior ranks. Critics cited in the account describe that as far-fetched.
The question of Ahmadinejad’s own status has become another pressure point. For now, he is nowhere to be found, feeding suspicions that he is in the custody of the IRGC or dead.
To understand why such suspicions have traction. the article turns back to the fractures that formed between Ahmadinejad and Iran’s top authority. Over time. his clashes with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and with the “nezam. ” or regime. over social and political issues cost him support among military wings and the Basij militia. Those forces—while they had helped crush the 2009 protests on Ahmadinejad’s behalf—remained loyal to Khamenei and to the system of “Guardianship of the Jurist.”.
It is precisely that loyalty, and the rivalry of institutions around it, that makes the alleged plan so destabilizing to imagine. If the top echelon is bound to Khamenei, what kind of transition could be imposed by force—and what does it say about the human cost of trying?
The article also lays out a second line of argument: that Ahmadinejad was useful to Israeli interests even when he was an opponent of Israel’s leaders in rhetoric. It points to his early statements as president. including his declaration that “Israel must vanish from the pages of time” and his questioning of the Holocaust being a good choice for Israel.
The case then moves through how those statements were used internationally. The piece says Ahmadinejad’s positions damaged Iran’s reputation almost beyond repair after he came to power following President Mohammad Khatami’s reform movement and Khatami’s call for “dialog among civilizations.” It argues that this created opportunity for Israeli leaders to portray the Islamic Republic in the worst possible terms.
It cites one example the article says Israel and its allies in Washington seized on: Ahmadinejad’s sponsorship of a Holocaust denial cartoon contest. In this account, those remarks were turned into justifications for an unprecedented and devastating sanctions program.
And then come the rumors—said to have been circulating privately in Tehran even at the time. The article recounts that there were suspicions that Ahmadinejad could be a Mossad asset, while also emphasizing that no hard proof ever emerged.
What did change, the piece argues, was the strategic timing of his posture. It says that, during a period when gaining Western trust in nuclear negotiations was paramount, Ahmadinejad was building Israeli hard-liners’ case against talks.
Now, the Times report is said to have deepened those rumors, adding alleged new connective tissue to an old story—along with Ahmadinejad’s most recent trips abroad, described here as to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and to Guatemala, both allies and supporters of Israel.
Even before the Times report. the article says. Trump acknowledged Israel bombed some of the people who were candidates to be an Iranian Delcy Rodríguez—the Venezuelan figure who the piece says took control from kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and reportedly is cooperating with the U.S. The most solid hint Trump gave. the article says. was that he had someone “inside” Iran in mind. “dashing the hopes of Iranian royalists.”.
Put side by side, the facts in this telling build a sharp tension: if the U.S. and Israel wanted an Iranian leader installed, and if Ahmadinejad was treated as a workable vehicle—then the war’s conduct becomes hard for critics to interpret as anything like a project to protect Iranian lives.
The article closes by insisting that. whether the allegation proves true or not. Ahmadinejad would never be a genuine beacon of freedom for Iranian people. It argues that Israel’s interests lie mostly in defanging Iran. even seeing it descend into a failed state that cannot threaten Israel or challenge its hegemony in the region. It says the U.S. by contrast. has consistently focused on Iran’s nuclear potential. noting that both Democratic and Republican administrations have indicated that if the nuclear issue was resolved to the satisfaction of the U.S. Iran could potentially be rehabilitated and rejoin the international community.
In the piece’s view, that possible rehabilitation would have allowed Iran to grow into a regional powerhouse and global force—something Israel has long opposed, which the article says is why Israel tried so hard to derail the 2015 nuclear agreement.
Whatever happens next, the article argues Ahmadinejad will never again be a meaningful factor in Iranian politics, even if he resurfaces alive and free one day. It dismisses what it calls the “Venezuela option” for Iran as a chimera that should never have been considered.
It also makes a stark claim about what might have been avoided: if the White House had listened to a handful of Iranians or those who know Iran well. rather than Netanyahu and war hawks in Congress. the article says 175 school children and their teachers would be alive today. the Strait of Hormuz might be open and free. and a nuclear deal could have already been signed.
Instead, it says war and destruction have followed, along with wasted lives and wasted treasure, chaos in the region, and a global economy wobbling. In that framing, Ahmadinejad is described not only as bad for Iranians again—but as a factor now extending damage beyond Iran’s borders.
Ahmadinejad Iran Israel United States Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Green Movement 2009 election protests IRGC Ayatollah Ali Khamenei nuclear deal sanctions Strait of Hormuz MISRYOUM USA News