“The Trojan Horse in Tehran: Did Mossad See Ahmadinejad as Its Strategic Bet?”

In major wars, some developments appear, at first glance, almost impossible to believe—especially when they overturn long-held assumptions about individuals and states. Yet wars, particularly those dominated by intelligence operations, are not always conducted according to ideological alignment. Rather, they are driven by calculations of utility, vulnerability to penetration, and the ability to cultivate alternative leadership from within the very system targeted for change.

From this perspective emerged reports claiming that Israel had developed a plan to elevate former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a leading role following the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the weakening of the Islamic Republic’s leadership structure. The story became even more extraordinary after The New York Times and Haaretz reported alleged clandestine contacts between Ahmadinejad and the Mossad, including meetings said to have taken place in Budapest, Hungary. According to those reports, the then-director of the Mossad, David Barnea, personally attended one of the meetings.

The issue, therefore, is no longer merely whether an alleged intelligence meeting actually took place. Rather, it raises a far more consequential question: Why would Israel—portrayed by Ahmadinejad for years as Iran’s existential enemy—consider him a suitable figure to lead Iran in the post-Khamenei era?

An even more complex question follows: Was Ahmadinejad the “Trojan Horse” that the Mossad sought to introduce into the heart of the Iranian regime, or is the very narrative of his alleged recruitment and Israel’s supposed wager on him itself an intelligence “Trojan Horse”—designed to sow distrust and ignite internal conflict within the Islamic Republic?

A War That Cannot Be Won from the Sky

The U.S.–Israeli campaign against Iran began on 28 February 2026 with a large-scale operation targeting the country’s political and military leadership. The offensive resulted in the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, along with several senior state officials and commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Roughly a week later, his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was appointed the new Supreme Leader, a transition that reaffirmed the enduring alliance between the religious establishment and the IRGC’s military leadership rather than signaling the emergence of a fundamentally different political order.

Yet eliminating the head of the regime—regardless of the operation’s precision or scale—is not, by itself, sufficient to bring down a state the size of Iran. Nor does it guarantee the emergence of a new leadership willing to fundamentally alter the country’s nuclear policy, regional strategy, or relationship with the West and Israel.

Air power can assassinate leaders, destroy strategic facilities, and disrupt command-and-control systems. It cannot, however, govern cities and provinces, take control of state institutions, or generate an alternative source of political legitimacy in a country of more than ninety million people, whose national consciousness remains acutely sensitive to foreign intervention.

From this perspective, it was analytically logical that any military campaign would be accompanied by a search for an Iranian figure capable of presenting himself as a domestic alternative rather than a ruler imposed from abroad. Such a figure would require a measure of revolutionary legitimacy, the ability to speak the language of ordinary citizens and the provinces, familiarity with the institutions of the state and the Revolutionary Guard, and, at the same time, a willingness to redirect the course that has defined Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

On 20 May 2026, The New York Times reported that a multi-phase Israeli plan envisioned placing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the helm of Iran following Khamenei’s assassination and the collapse of the existing leadership. According to the report, the aerial campaign was intended to coincide with mounting domestic pressure and coordinated movements by armed groups operating from Iran’s periphery, ultimately leading to the regime’s collapse and the emergence of an “alternative government.” The newspaper cited U.S. officials who had been briefed on the Israeli plan.

The objective, of course, was not to install Ahmadinejad as Supreme Leader. As an engineer rather than a cleric, he lacks the traditional religious credentials associated with that office. The more plausible scenario envisioned him serving as a transitional president or political figurehead to oversee the post-theocratic phase following the fragmentation of clerical rule.

On 13 July, the story entered a more detailed phase. Reports based on investigations by The New York Times and Haaretz claimed that the Mossad had begun cultivating a relationship with Ahmadinejad as early as 2022. According to these accounts, Mossad operatives met him during his overseas travels, including visits to Hungary, before Mossad Director David Barnea reportedly traveled to Budapest to meet the former Iranian president in person.

The reports further alleged that Israel helped finance Ahmadinejad’s travel and accommodation, and that the contacts gained momentum after his visit to Guatemala in 2023 before deepening during subsequent visits to Ludovika University in Budapest.

Ahmadinejad’s office categorically rejected these allegations on 14 July, describing them as fabricated claims and a “Hollywood scenario.” It denied that the former president had ever been recruited by the Mossad or placed under house arrest.

When the Messenger Becomes Part of the Story

At the same time, a report published by a newspaper of The New York Times’ stature cannot be dismissed lightly. It is not a platform for circulating rumors, but one of the world’s most influential news organizations, with a long-established professional reputation and editorial standards that, at least in principle, subject sensitive reporting to multiple layers of verification and review.

The newspaper’s own policy on anonymous sources permits their use only when the information is both significant and credible, and when it cannot reasonably be obtained on the record. This suggests that the editors knew the identities of the sources who discussed Ahmadinejad and had verified both their positions and their connection to the matter, even if their names were withheld from readers for security or political reasons.

In that sense, publication in The New York Times elevates the story from the realm of rumor to that of a serious allegation that cannot simply be ignored. Professional credibility, however well established, does not grant any newspaper immunity from intelligence-driven deception.

There is an important distinction between verifying the identity of a source and independently verifying the accuracy of the information that source provides. A senior official may indeed be knowledgeable, yet possess only a partial view of a broader operation. Equally, the leak itself may constitute an integral component of the operation—designed not merely to reveal historical facts but to produce a specific political effect once made public.

The newspaper’s experience with Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction remains particularly instructive. In 2004, The New York Times acknowledged that parts of its earlier coverage had not met the necessary standards of scrutiny. It admitted that controversial claims had been published without sufficient caution or independent verification, and that the newspaper had relied on defectors and officials with a clear interest in toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime. The paper also candidly conceded that it had “not been aggressive enough” in re-examining those claims after the promised evidence failed to materialize.

For that reason, the involvement of The New York Times undoubtedly lends weight to the allegations concerning Ahmadinejad’s alleged contacts with the Mossad. Yet it does not relieve researchers of the responsibility to ask a parallel question: Did the newspaper expose a genuine intelligence operation, or did it—knowingly or unknowingly—become part of its final phase?

The Blacksmith’s Son Who Rose from the Margins

Returning to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he was born in 1956 in the village of Aradan, in Iran’s Semnan Province, into a modest family. His father worked as a blacksmith before the family relocated to Tehran. Ahmadinejad studied civil engineering at the Iran University of Science and Technology, where he later earned a Ph.D. in transportation engineering.

This social background played a defining role in shaping the political image he would later cultivate: the son of a poor family, distant from the political and economic aristocracy that had emerged around state institutions, and unconnected to either the clerical establishment or the traditional merchant families that historically occupied positions of influence.

During the Iran-Iraq War, Ahmadinejad became associated with the Basij and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) before holding a series of administrative positions in different provinces. In the 1990s, he was appointed governor of Ardabil Province. Following the rise of the reformists under President Mohammad Khatami, he retreated from executive politics and returned to academia, only to re-emerge in 2003 when Tehran’s conservative city council appointed him mayor of the capital.

It was from the mayor’s office that Ahmadinejad methodically constructed his political persona. He cultivated the image of an official who dressed modestly, shunned displays of wealth and luxury, visited working-class neighborhoods, shared meals with laborers, spoke the language of social justice, distributed public assistance, and sought to restore a distinctly conservative religious character to the municipality’s institutions.

His greatest political asset was not an extraordinary urban development program in Tehran, but rather his ability to transform personal simplicity into a form of political and symbolic capital. He presented himself as an outsider to the entrenched establishment, confronting revolutionary elites who, over a quarter-century of rule, had accumulated wealth, influence, and extensive family networks.

During the 2005 presidential election, Ahmadinejad campaigned under the slogan of “bringing Iran’s oil revenues to the people’s tables.” He portrayed himself as the champion of the mostazafin—the underprivileged—in contrast to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the Islamic Republic’s most prominent figures and, in the popular imagination, the embodiment of an affluent and well-entrenched revolutionary elite.

Ahmadinejad won the runoff election by mobilizing conservative networks and the Basij, drawing strong support from smaller cities, lower-income constituencies, and voters disillusioned by the limited achievements of Khatami’s reform movement.

Thus, the presidency was won not by a senior cleric, one of the founders of the Islamic Republic, or a towering figure of the 1979 Revolution, but by a populist engineer who rose from the mayoralty of Tehran to the presidency in just two years.

The Populism of the Poor

Ahmadinejad’s presidency was built on a model of redistributive populism. He expanded subsidized loans and cash assistance, launched housing projects, distributed direct financial aid during his frequent provincial tours, and turned these visits into a permanent stage on which to demonstrate his closeness to ordinary citizens.

He personally received letters and complaints, promising to resolve individual grievances, and at times treated state resources as a direct instrument for addressing citizens’ immediate needs. This approach gave residents of Iran’s peripheral provinces a sense that they had finally become visible to the political center after years of being overlooked by Tehran’s technocratic elite.

Yet these policies failed to produce sustainable economic development. Ahmadinejad’s presidency coincided with a dramatic increase in oil revenues, but a substantial share of this windfall was absorbed by current expenditures, subsidies, consumer lending, and imports rather than invested in building a productive economy capable of withstanding international sanctions. At the same time, he weakened state planning institutions, marginalized experienced technocrats, and intervened directly in monetary and banking policy.

As a result, Ahmadinejad embodied two seemingly contradictory legacies. He gave lower-income Iranians a stronger sense of political inclusion, while the very policies that fostered this sentiment also deepened structural economic imbalances, the costs of which would ultimately fall most heavily on the same social groups.

This helps explain why he continues to retain a degree of support in Iran’s provinces and among segments of the lower-income population. More importantly, it illustrates a broader characteristic of populism: its durability does not always depend on successful policymaking. Rather, it often rests on the emotional memory left among those who, even if only briefly, believed that the country’s leader spoke their language and shared their way of life.

Reversing Khatami’s Legacy

It is important to recall that Ahmadinejad assumed office after eight years of Mohammad Khatami’s presidency, a period marked by relative political and cultural openness, efforts to improve relations with Europe and the Arab world, and the promotion of the concept of a “Dialogue among Civilizations” as an alternative to the rhetoric of confrontation.

Ahmadinejad represented a decisive break with that trajectory. He restored revolutionary rhetoric to the forefront of Iranian foreign policy, intensified confrontation with the United States and Israel, championed the expansion of uranium enrichment, and rejected any linkage between Iran’s right to nuclear technology and political concessions to the West.

Ahmadinejad never explicitly declared that Iran sought to acquire nuclear weapons. Official discourse continued to emphasize the peaceful nature of the country’s nuclear program. Nevertheless, his presidency witnessed a rapid expansion of Iran’s enrichment capabilities, escalating confrontations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Security Council, and the imposition of successive rounds of international sanctions that deepened Iran’s isolation.

While he stopped short of openly pursuing a nuclear bomb, Ahmadinejad was the president who pushed Iran’s nuclear program to the brink of international confrontation, transforming the defense of uranium enrichment into a symbol of national sovereignty and Iranian dignity.

He also became one of the Islamic Republic’s most internationally controversial figures because of his explicit Holocaust denial and his repeated predictions regarding Israel’s disappearance. In 2009, he described the Holocaust as “a lie used to justify the creation of the Israeli state.”

Here lies the central paradox in the story of his alleged contacts with the Mossad. The very man whom Israel and the United States sought to isolate during his presidency because of his nuclear posture and anti-Israel rhetoric is the same figure whom Israel was later alleged to have considered as a potential leader for post-Khamenei Iran.

The 2009 Election: The Rift That Never Healed

In 2009, Iranian authorities declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of a second presidential term with nearly 63 percent of the vote. His principal challengers, Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, rejected the results, accusing the authorities of electoral fraud. Their objections gave rise to the Green Movement, which rallied under the slogan, “Where Is My Vote?”

The protests became the gravest domestic crisis the Islamic Republic had faced since its founding. They were met with a sweeping crackdown by the security services, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Basij, resulting in deaths, mass arrests, and the detention of thousands of protesters and political activists. Since then, the 2009 election has remained the subject of profound political and moral dispute within Iranian society.

At the same time, it cannot be categorically argued that Ahmadinejad lacked genuine electoral support. Opinion polls conducted before the vote consistently showed him leading his rivals, although the speed with which the results were announced, together with the distribution and consistency of the vote counts, generated widespread suspicion. The central issue, therefore, is not whether Ahmadinejad was popular, but whether a pivotal election conducted in a highly closed political environment was resolved in a manner that ultimately undermined public confidence in its integrity.

Mojtaba Khamenei was accused of playing a pivotal role in mobilizing the IRGC and the Basij behind Ahmadinejad and coordinating the state’s response to the protests. While these allegations have never been substantiated by publicly available official documents, they have been repeatedly echoed in opposition testimonies and reports examining the activities of the Supreme Leader’s inner circle.

The announcement of Ahmadinejad’s victory marked the high point of his alliance with Ali Khamenei. The Supreme Leader viewed him as a president capable of confronting the reformist movement and reasserting the revolutionary line. Yet the president who had relied on Khamenei’s backing to survive the turmoil of 2009 soon began constructing an independent power base that increasingly challenged the authority of the clerical establishment.

The Disciple Who Defied His Mentor

Contrary to his conventional image, Ahmadinejad was never merely an obedient executor of the Supreme Leader’s will. During his second term, he sought to expand the powers of the presidency, bring the security and intelligence services more firmly under executive control, and reduce the influence of institutions directly affiliated with Khamenei’s office.

The confrontation reached its peak in 2011, when Ahmadinejad dismissed Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, only for Khamenei to intervene and reinstate him. Ahmadinejad responded by boycotting cabinet meetings and official functions for nearly eleven days, in what became one of the boldest public challenges ever mounted by a sitting Iranian president against the authority of the Velayat-e Faqih.

The dispute extended far beyond the fate of a single minister. Ahmadinejad sought greater control over intelligence affairs, key aspects of foreign policy, and the succession process within the presidency. He also attempted to elevate his closest confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, to a prominent political position.

Traditional conservatives and senior clerics regarded Mashaei as the leader of what they labeled the “deviant current” because his discourse blended Iranian nationalism with Mahdist themes, promoted the concept of an “Iranian School” alongside the “Islamic School,” and implicitly suggested that religious and popular legitimacy could be established independently of the traditional clerical establishment.

From that confrontation onward, Ahmadinejad’s political network was systematically dismantled.

Mashaei was arrested and sentenced to six and a half years in prison on charges that included endangering national security. Hamid Baghaei, Ahmadinejad’s vice president and one of his closest associates, received a fifteen-year prison sentence on corruption charges. His media adviser, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, was likewise arrested and prosecuted, while several other figures associated with the presidency faced similar legal action.

The campaign extended beyond Ahmadinejad’s inner circle. The Guardian Council disqualified him from running for president in 2017, 2021, and 2024, preventing him from testing whatever remained of his popular support through the ballot box.

In this way, Ahmadinejad’s political trajectory came full circle: from being one of the regime’s favored sons to becoming a political outcast, watching his closest associates imprisoned, his network dismantled, and every path back to power systematically closed.

It is against this backdrop that speculation about a possible rapprochement with the regime’s adversaries becomes politically and psychologically conceivable. Ahmadinejad was a leader whom the ruling establishment had once used to confront the reformists, only to discard when he sought to build an independent center of power. He witnessed his closest associates imprisoned, was barred from contesting the presidency on three separate occasions, and was gradually excluded from the country’s decision-making circles.

Yet the existence of a motive for resentment does not constitute evidence of collusion. Nor does political conflict with Khamenei automatically imply cooperation with Israel. It makes such a narrative plausible from a psychological and political perspective, but it does not make it true.

The Mahdi Beyond the Jurist’s Cloak

Another dimension of Ahmadinejad’s political persona cannot be overlooked: his profound intellectual and emotional attachment to the idea of the End Times and the reappearance of the Hidden Imam (Imam al-Mahdi).

Although he was neither a cleric nor a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence, Ahmadinejad made Mahdist discourse a defining element of his political identity. He repeatedly spoke of the imminence of the Imam’s return and portrayed his government as helping prepare the ground for an era of universal justice.

Following his first address to the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, Ahmadinejad recounted to a senior cleric that someone had told him a divine light had surrounded him during the speech and that the audience had listened in complete stillness, unable to avert their gaze. He also frequently concluded his international speeches with prayers for the hastening of the Imam al-Mahdi’s reappearance.

In doing so, his rhetoric carried an implicit challenge to the doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih (the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist). If a political leader could claim direct spiritual guidance from the Hidden Imam—or suggest that his government enjoyed the Imam’s special favor—what remained of the clerical establishment’s exclusive claim to mediate between the Imam and society?

The conflict, therefore, was not one between a religious and a secular vision of politics. Rather, it reflected a struggle between two competing models of religious legitimacy: an institutional, jurisprudential legitimacy monopolized by the clerical establishment and the Supreme Leader, and a populist, Mahdist legitimacy that Ahmadinejad sought to cultivate for himself and his political movement.

Why Ahmadinejad?

However unusual such a wager may appear, the choice of Ahmadinejad is not entirely devoid of strategic logic from the standpoint of intelligence planning.

First, he was not an opposition figure detached from Iranian society, an exiled prince, or an obscure activist unknown beyond political circles. He was a former president who understood the state from within and possessed firsthand knowledge of its institutions, bureaucratic networks, and security apparatus.

Second, he either retained—or was believed to retain—a degree of support among lower-income constituencies and residents of smaller cities. These groups might distrust opposition movements based abroad, yet still remember his provincial visits, welfare programs, and rhetoric of social justice.

Third, Ahmadinejad had longstanding ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij, even if those relationships later deteriorated into rivalry. He understood the institutional culture of these organizations, how they operated, and how their rank-and-file could be addressed.

Fourth, he could potentially frame political change in the language of revolution and nationalism rather than surrender to the West. A rapprochement with the United States or Israel initiated by a reformist figure could easily be portrayed as betrayal. The same policy, if pursued by a politician once renowned for his hostility toward both countries, might instead be presented as a patriotic reassessment compelled by the imperative of saving Iran.

Finally, Ahmadinejad arguably possessed a personal motive for revenge against the system that had elevated him only to cast him aside—imprisoning his closest associates and repeatedly preventing his return to political life.

Recent reports suggest that during his years of political isolation, Ahmadinejad gradually modified both his public image and his rhetoric. He became increasingly critical of the costs of Iran’s regional policies and international sanctions while speaking more openly about engagement with the wider world. According to these investigations, Israeli intelligence interpreted this evolution as evidence that he had moved away from uncompromising ideological hostility toward a more pragmatic outlook—or, at the very least, toward a posture that could be politically exploited.

If the reports are accurate, Ahmadinejad’s appeal to the Mossad may not have rested on his ability to become a broadly accepted democratic leader, but rather on his potential to fracture the regime from within, attract segments of the conservative camp, and provide externally driven political change with an Iranian revolutionary face.

Why the Bet Appears Unlikely

Yet this hypothesis faces obstacles that are almost structural in nature.

Ahmadinejad is far from being a consensus figure capable of uniting Iranian society. For millions of Iranians, he remains inseparably associated with the disputed 2009 election, the suppression of the Green Movement, years of international sanctions, diplomatic isolation, inflation, and prolonged economic hardship.

Nor can his current popular support be measured with any confidence. His electoral success in 2005 does not necessarily translate into comparable backing more than two decades later, and no independent polling exists to establish the extent of his remaining support in the provinces or within state institutions.

His history of Holocaust denial and uncompromising hostility toward Israel would also make any sudden transformation into a figure acceptable to Tel Aviv politically burdensome for both sides. Were he to acknowledge such cooperation openly, he would destroy the revolutionary and nationalist image upon which his political identity was built. Were he to conceal it, he would remain perpetually vulnerable to exposure and blackmail.

Moreover, no former president—regardless of his popularity—could realistically govern a country after the collapse of its central authority without an organized military force behind him. It was never clear how Ahmadinejad could have secured the loyalty of the Revolutionary Guard or persuaded its commanders to accept a political transition backed by the very state that had assassinated their leaders and destroyed key military installations.

Indeed, the selection of Ahmadinejad may itself reflect the limitations of Israeli planners’ understanding of Iran’s social and political landscape. External powers seeking regime change often overestimate the significance of well-known personalities, conflating public recognition with political legitimacy, and assuming that former popularity automatically translates into the capacity to lead a nation during a period of war and institutional collapse.

History also suggests that foreign military intervention frequently strengthens national solidarity, prompting even opponents of the government to rally behind the state in the face of an external enemy rather than embrace an alternative promoted by the attacking power. Subsequent developments following Khamenei’s assassination appeared to reinforce this pattern, with Iranian nationalist rhetoric intensifying and the regime successfully using the war to mobilize segments of society that had not necessarily supported it beforehand.

Was Ahmadinejad an Agent?

The available information offers no definitive answer. Even if the reported meetings did occur, contact alone does not necessarily imply recruitment.

Former political leaders or intermediaries may meet representatives of hostile states to gauge intentions, explore negotiations, or seek future political opportunities without becoming intelligence assets in the technical sense.

Nor do we know what was actually discussed during the alleged meetings, whether Ahmadinejad accepted any proposal, merely listened to it, attempted to use it as a vehicle for returning to power, or later relayed its details to Iranian authorities.

It is equally plausible that personal ambition played a role. The desire to regain power, combined with a sense of injustice and resentment toward the establishment that had marginalized him, could lead a politician to explore avenues he would previously have considered unthinkable.

Yet the distance between political contact and intelligence collaboration remains substantial. It cannot be bridged by a single newspaper investigation, regardless of the publication’s reputation or the seniority of its sources.

The Narrative as an Intelligence Operation

There remains another, more sophisticated possibility: perhaps the true objective of the leak was not to prove that Ahmadinejad had become an Israeli asset, but to persuade the Iranian regime that he might have become one.

In intelligence warfare, the operative is not always the individual who has been recruited.

Sometimes, the operative is suspicion itself.

Who Is the Real Trojan Horse?

Regardless of the accuracy of every detail, the Ahmadinejad story reveals a fundamental aspect of the campaign against Iran. The military strategy appears to have extended beyond destroying infrastructure and eliminating senior leaders; it also sought an entry point into the Islamic Republic’s political and social fabric.

Israel, it would seem, was looking for an Iranian figure who would not appear alien to the Revolution, yet who could gradually unravel the system from within—a man capable of appealing to the poor, conservatives, and members of the Revolutionary Guard while simultaneously steering Iran toward a strategic opening to the West.

Against that backdrop, Ahmadinejad—with all his contradictions—may have appeared more attractive than the exiled opposition. He was a former revolutionary, a populist president, a long-standing opponent of Israel, and ultimately an outcast rejected by the very regime he had once served.

Yet if such a plan indeed existed, it also illustrates the limits of externally engineered political transformation. A man burdened by a legacy of repression, sanctions, and personal political feuds cannot simply be recast as a unifying national leader because an intelligence service considers him a useful instrument. Nor can Iranian political legitimacy be manufactured in Israeli operations rooms, regardless of the sophistication of intelligence gathering or the depth of infiltration.

Perhaps Ahmadinejad did meet with the Mossad. Perhaps he was offered a role in a post-Khamenei order. Perhaps anger and ambition led him to listen. Or perhaps none of it occurred in the manner described.

What remains beyond dispute, however, is that from the moment the story entered the public domain, it began to perform an independent political and intelligence function of its own: a former president cast under suspicion, and a regime compelled to question the loyalty of its own men as much as it fears the aircraft of its adversaries.

In the end, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not have been the Trojan Horse intended to enter Tehran.

The real Trojan Horse may have been the story itself.