Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has forcefully denied explosive claims that Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad attempted to recruit him as part of an alleged plot to topple Iran’s leadership, dismissing the reports as “Hollywood-style” fabrications. 

In a statement issued on Monday (July 13), Ahmadinejad’s office rejected reports that he had been secretly approached by Mossad, offered support to become Iran’s future leader, and later placed under house arrest after the alleged operation failed. 

The office said the allegations, published by The New York Times, “did not merit a denial”, describing the newspaper as one that is “known for publishing fake news and fabricating lies.” It also accused the US daily of being willing to publish “fabricated articles and reports in exchange for payment”, while insisting that Ahmadinejad remained politically active and was continuing his daily work.

The denial came after The New York Times, citing American and Iranian officials familiar with the matter, reported that Mossad had spent years attempting to cultivate ties with Ahmadinejad as part of a broader regime change strategy.

Israel spent years cultivating former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as part of a failed plan to install him as Iran’s new leader during this year’s war, the New York Times reported, citing American, Israeli and Iranian officials familiar with the operation. 

According to the report, the yearslong effort to groom the former Iranian president as an intelligence asset culminated in a dramatic effort to take him to a Mossad safe house in Iran in the early days of the war. But the plan fell apart.

In early 2024, the rector of a university in Budapest received a startling request from a top Hungarian government official.

The official told the rector, Professor Gergely Deli, that Ludovika University of Public Service should hold a climate change conference and extend an invitation to an unlikely guest: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the widely reviled former president of Iran.

Even more shocking was the reason. The official told Mr. Deli that the conference was merely a front for Mr. Ahmadinejad to have secret discussions in Budapest with intelligence operatives from Israel, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s avowed enemy.

Mr. Deli knew that the invitation could tarnish both his own reputation and that of the university. But, he said in an interview, he believed he might be playing a role in saving lives.

“You have two enemies, and if these enemies want to talk with each other, then it’s best to do what you can to make them talk,” he said.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s 2024 visit to the university and a second one the following year were part of a yearslong Israeli effort to groom him as an intelligence asset who, when the time came, could be installed as Iran’s new leader, according to both American and Iranian officials familiar with the operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence.

Recruiting Mr. Ahmadinejad was of such priority for Israel that the country’s then-spy chief David Barnea even traveled to the Hungarian capital in 2024 to meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad personally, according to former American officials. 

Soon afterward, they said, Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, notified the C.I.A. that it had been in contact with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Israel’s decision to build a regime-change plan around Mr. Ahmadinejad is an extraordinary twist in the saga of the country’s relations with the former president, who was known for accelerating Iran’s nuclear program, calling regularly for the destruction of Israel and denying the Holocaust.

In recent years, according to American officials, Israel secretly paid money to Mr. Ahmadinejad for housing and travel, and Israeli operatives met him abroad on several occasions, including during his trips to Budapest.

The effort culminated in late February of this year — during the first days of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — with an audacious operation to relocate the former leader, who had been living under strict surveillance in Tehran. The goal: to set in motion the plan to topple the current regime and install Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The plan failed.

On Feb. 28, an Israeli airstrike hit Mr. Ahmadinejad’s compound, targeting the building of his bodyguards and his armored vehicle. After the strike, according to four senior Iranian officials, a black Peugeot car arrived, picked up Mr. Ahmadinejad and whisked him away at high speed from the chaotic scene.

American and Iranian officials with knowledge of the operation said the car had been driven by Mossad operatives, who took Mr. Ahmadinejad to a secret safe house in Iran.

But the former Iranian leader was upset about the frantic rescue operation, and he appeared to be disillusioned about the Israeli plan to return him to power, according to people with knowledge of what occurred.

He eventually left the safe house under circumstances that are still unclear. Mr. Ahmadinejad was not seen in public again until last Monday, when he made a brief appearance at the funeral procession for the slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

His current status remains uncertain. But four senior Iranian officials said that Mr. Ahmadinejad was in the custody of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence wing, under house arrest now that Iran has learned about much of his interactions with Israel.

Israeli officials have not commented publicly about the plan to install Mr. Ahmadinejad as Iran’s leader, which was part of a broader attempt to topple the government in Tehran. Another element involved arming and training Iranian Kurdish opposition forces based in northern Iraq to cross into western Iran, hold territory there and eventually move toward the capital Tehran, an effort that never manifested.

The regime-change plan involved a “sequence of special operations, very, very unique, that was supposed to happen,” Tamir Hayman, a former head of intelligence for the Israeli Defense Forces, told the PBS talk show “Firing Line” in May, after The New York Times first revealed details of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s role in the plan. “And Ahmadinejad was part of that sequence.”

Mossad officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a spokesman for Mr. Ahmadinejad, declined to comment.

Read more : https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/us/politics/israel-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-iran.html (New York Times/ WION)

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Iran’s former president has appeared at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei despite having been reported killed at the start of the war.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of millions of mourners who poured into Tehran dressed in black on Monday to escort the slain supreme leader’s coffin through the capital.

The former hardline president, who governed from 2005 to 2013, was declared dead by several Iranian state-affiliated media outlets on the opening day of the war, when Israeli and US strikes killed Khamenei and much of the country’s leadership.

It was thought he had been killed when a missile struck near his home.

He was never seen or heard from in the months that followed, and no official confirmation or denial of his fate was issued, leaving his status among the many uncertainties of the war’s chaotic first days.

On Monday, however, he was seen in public for the first time since the war, moving among the mourners in a jacket with a mask pulled down to his throat.

His reappearance came a day after the country’s other living former presidents – Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani – were absent from the ceremonies, to which critics said they had not been invited.

Mr Ahmadinejad emerged into one of the largest funerals in the country’s history. Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, joined the crowds too, photographed riding on the back of a motorbike to move through the crowd.

Along the route, mourners strung up an effigy of Donald Trump and waved banners calling for his death.

Khamenei’s flag-draped coffin, and those of family members killed alongside him on Feb 28 sat atop a truck decorated to resemble the ornamental grating around an imam’s shrine.

Helicopter footage on state television showed the crowd stretching for miles in central Tehran.

Authorities predicted the event could draw as many as 20 million people.

Mr Trump had hoped the war would topple the Islamic Republic, but the sea of mourners showed the extent to which he had been misled about the mood inside Iran. 

The demand for revenge was everywhere in Tehran.

A banner several metres long declared: “We will kill Trump,” and red flags – the colour of revenge in Shia tradition – rippled through the throng.

The coffins were driven from Damavand Street through Imam Hussein Square, down Enghelab (Revolution) Avenue and on to Azadi (Freedom) Square, past a towering monument of Khamenei’s clenched fist erected in Revolution Square.

The monument’s base was inscribed with the names of schoolgirls killed when American missiles hit their school during the war.

Along Enghelab, organisers had lined the avenue with portraits of the dead – the fallen of two recent wars and of the “resistance” allies Iran backs across the region.

The procession moved at a crawl as the truck repeatedly slowed or stopped, mourners surging to touch it and shower it with flowers.

In Azadi Square, the vehicle halted entirely so more people could reach it.

Some tossed scarves for guards to brush against the coffin – a gesture seen as a blessing – while crews on firetruck ladders misted water over the crowd against the July heat.

Officials on loudspeakers urged people to walk slowly, not to push and to keep to the edges of the street, wary of the dangers of such a vast crowd.

Hasan Hasanzadeh, the Revolutionary Guard general overseeing the procession, said the coffins would travel a 12-hour route through Tehran to Mehrabad International Airport.

Much of the senior leadership walked in the procession, including Masoud Pezeshkian, the president, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, the judiciary chief, Sadegh Larijani, head of the expediency council and Esmail Qaani, the Quds Force commander, along with a large slate of cabinet ministers.

Still absent was Iran’s new supreme leader. Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen since he was chosen to succeed his father.

His three brothers – Mostafa, Masoud and Meysam – took their places in the front row at the funeral prayer on Sunday, their faces streaked with tears as they appeared in public for the first time since their father was killed.

The mourning began on Saturday and is to end on Thursday with Khamenei’s burial at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, his birthplace, after ceremonies in Qom and the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala. (Telegraph)

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