Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrested

For years, Israel had been conducting a covert operation aimed at recruiting Ahmadinejad as an intelligence asset and, at a later stage, even planned to install him as Iran’s leader following the overthrow of the regime, The New York Times (NYT) reported, citing four senior Iranian officials.

According to the report, one of the more unusual phases of the operation took place in early 2024, when a senior Hungarian government official asked Gergely Deli, rector of Budapest’s Ludovika University of Public Service, to invite Ahmadinejad to a climate change conference.

Deli said he was told that the conference would actually serve as a cover for secret talks between Ahmadinejad and Israeli intelligence officials. Despite concerns about potential damage to his own reputation and that of the university, he agreed to invite Ahmadinejad because he believed that “if you have two enemies, and those enemies want to talk to each other, then the best thing to do is everything you can to make them talk.”

Former U.S. officials said that former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) chief David Barnea personally traveled to Budapest to meet with Ahmadinejad.

In the years that followed, Israel allegedly made several covert payments to Ali Akbar Javanfekr, Ahmadinejad’s spokesman, and Israeli agents met with him several more times before the start of Operation “Rising Lion.”

In February, The New York Times reported that Ahmadinejad’s residential compound was hit by an Israeli airstrike targeting his bodyguards and an armored vehicle, after which Mossad operatives reportedly picked him up and took him to a secret safe house. He eventually left the safe house for unclear reasons and was not seen again until he appeared at the funeral of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

According to senior Iranian officials, the intelligence branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps detained him and placed him under house arrest.

Mossad officials and Ahmadinejad’s spokesman, Javanfekr, declined to comment to The New York Times.