Israel courted Iran’s former hardline president for post-regime role, reports claim

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seen here in 2024, is said to have learned English and tried to improve his image after falling out with the Iranian regime. Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters View image in fullscreen Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seen here in 2024, is said to have learned English and tried to improve his image after falling out with the Iranian regime. Photograph: Majid Asgaripour/Reuters Israel courted Iran’s former hardline president for post-regime role, reports claim Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly wooed by Mossad agents after distancing himself from Khamenei Middle East crisis live – latest updates Israel tried to recruit Iran’s intensely anti-Zionist former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to lead a new post-Islamic regime in Tehran, even going as far as sending its top spy to Budapest to meet him, according to media reports. The remarkable quest to turn a leader who had denied the Holocaust and called for Israel’s erasure began in 2022, according to reporting by the New York Times and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz , and continued even after Israel became engaged in a brutal campaign in Gaza against Hamas, a key Iranian ally. Ahmadinejad – who is now believed to be in the custody of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), according to a New York Times report citing Iranian officials – had begun in previous years to distance himself from the regime, improve his English and redefine his image. The effort to install him as a new Iranian leader gathered steam after Ahmadinejad was invited to speak at the same university in the Hungarian capital that had been addressed just two months earlier by Benjamin Netanyahu , Israel’s prime minister, in 2025. View image in fullscreen Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seen here in 2005, was frequently condemned by Human Rights Watch for his treatment of Iranian protesters. Photograph: Ho New/Reuters According to the Times , recruiting Ahmadinejad became such a priority that David Barnea – then the head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency – travelled to Hungary to meet him personally after he had been invited to speak at Ludovika University at a climate change conference the year before. Barnea’s involvement was confirmed in Haaretz’s report, which suggested that the former Mossad director even skipped a security consultation with Netanyahu, aimed at discussing the war in Gaza at a time when the fighting with Hamas was at its peak, to focus on Ahmadinejad. After the meeting with Barnea, the Times reported, the Mossad informed the CIA that it had been in contact with Ahmadinejad, with the relationship apparently having initially gained momentum after the ex-president visited Guatemala in 2023. Israeli officials are even said to have paid Ahmadinejad for housing and travel, with Mossad operatives meeting him several times, including on trips to Hungary at a time when the country was led by the former far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán a close ally of Israel and Donald Trump. Details of the effort have