Days after Israeli strikes killed Iran\u2019s supreme leader and other top officials in the opening salvos of the war, President Trump mused publicly that it would be best if \u201csomeone from within\u201d Iran took over the country.<\/p>\n
It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views.<\/p>\n
But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.<\/p>\n
Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war\u2019s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran<\/a> that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan.<\/p>\n He has not been seen publicly since then and his current whereabouts and condition are unknown.<\/p>\n To say that Mr. Ahmadinejad was an unusual choice would be a vast understatement. While he had increasingly clashed with the regime\u2019s leaders and had been placed under close watch by the Iranian authorities, he was known during his term as president, from 2005 to 2013, for his calls to \u201cwipe Israel off the map.\u201d He was a strong supporter of Iran\u2019s nuclear program, a fierce critic of the United States and known for violently cracking down on internal dissent.<\/p>\n How Mr. Ahmadinejad was recruited to take part remains unknown.<\/p>\n The existence of the effort, which has not been previously reported, was part of a multistage plan developed by Israel to topple Iran\u2019s theocratic government. It underscores how Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel went into the war not only misjudging how quickly they could achieve their objectives but also gambling to some degree on a risky plan for leadership change in Iran that even some of Mr. Trump\u2019s aides found implausible<\/a>. Some American officials were skeptical in particular about the viability of putting Mr. Ahmadinejad back into power.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the outset, President Trump was clear about his goals for Operation Epic Fury: destroy Iran\u2019s ballistic missiles, dismantle their production facilities, sink their navy, and weaken their proxy,\u201d Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in response to a request for comment about the regime change plan and Ahmadinejad. \u201cThe United States military met or exceeded all of its objectives, and now, our negotiators are working to make a deal that would end Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities for good.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency, declined to comment.<\/p>\n U.S. officials spoke during the early days of the war about plans developed with Israel to identify a pragmatist who could take over the country. Officials insisted that there was intelligence that some within the Iranian regime would be willing to work with the United States, even if those people couldn\u2019t be described as \u201cmoderates.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Trump was enjoying the success of the raid by U.S. forces to capture Venezuela\u2019s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and the willingness of his interim replacement to work with the White House \u2014 a model that Mr. Trump appeared to think could be replicated elsewhere.<\/p>\n In recent years, Mr. Ahmadinejad has clashed with regime leaders, accusing them of corruption, and rumors have swirled about his loyalties. He was disqualified from numerous presidential elections, his aides were arrested and Mr. Ahmadinejad\u2019s movements were increasingly restricted to his home in the Narmak section of eastern Tehran.<\/p>\n That American and Israeli officials saw Mr. Ahmadinejad as a potential leader of a new government in Iran is further evidence that the war in February was launched with the hopes of installing more pliable leadership in Tehran. Mr. Trump and members of his cabinet have said that the goals of the war were narrowly focused on destroying Iran\u2019s nuclear, missile and military capabilities.<\/p>\n There are many unanswered questions about how Israel and the United States planned to put Mr. Ahmadinejad in power, and the circumstances surrounding the airstrike that injured him. American officials said that the strike \u2014 carried out by the Israeli Air Force \u2014 was meant to kill the guards watching over Mr. Ahmadinejad as part of a plan to release him from house arrest.<\/p>\n On the first day of the war, Israeli strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran\u2019s supreme leader. The strike at Ayatollah Khamenei\u2019s compound in central Tehran also blew up a meeting<\/a> of Iranian officials, killing some officials whom the White House had identified as more willing to negotiate over a change in government than their bosses.<\/p>\n There were also initial reports at the time in the Iranian media that Mr. Ahmadinejad had been killed in the strike on his home.<\/p>\n The strike did not significantly damage Mr. Ahmadinejad\u2019s house at the end of a dead-end street. But the security outpost at the entrance to the street was struck. Satellite imagery shows that building was destroyed.<\/p>\n In the days that followed, official news agencies clarified that he had survived but that his \u201cbodyguards\u201d \u2014 in actuality Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members who were both guarding him and holding him under house arrest \u2014 were killed.<\/p>\n An article<\/a> in The Atlantic in March, citing anonymous associates of Mr. Ahmadinejad, said that the former president had been freed from government confinement after the strike at his house, which the article described as \u201cin effect a jailbreak operation.\u201d<\/p>\n After that article, an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad confirmed to The New York Times that Mr. Ahmadinejad saw the strike as an attempt to free him. The associate said the Americans viewed Mr. Ahmadinejad as someone who could lead Iran, and had the capability to manage \u201cIran\u2019s political, social and military situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Ahmadinejad would have been able \u201cplay a very important role\u201d in Iran in the near future, the associate said, suggesting that the United States saw him as similar to Delcy Rodriguez, who took power in Venezuela after American forces seized Mr. Maduro and has since worked closely with the Trump administration, the person said.<\/p>\n During his presidency, Mr. Ahmadinejad was known both for his hard-line policies and his often outlandish fundamentalist pronouncements, such as his declaration that there was not a single gay person in Iran and his denial of the Holocaust. He spoke at a conference in Tehran called \u201cA World Without Zionism.\u201d<\/p>\n Western satirists lampooned these views, and Mr. Ahmadinejad became something of an unwitting pop culture curiosity, even the subject of Saturday Night Live parodies.<\/a><\/p>\n He also presided over the country at a time when Iran was accelerating the enrichment of uranium it could one day use for making a nuclear bomb should it choose to weaponize its program. An American intelligence assessment in 2007 concluded that Iran had, years earlier, frozen its work on building a nuclear device but was continuing the enrichment of nuclear fuel it could use for a nuclear weapon if it changed its mind.<\/p>\n After Mr. Ahmadinejad left office he gradually became something of an open critic of the theocratic government, or at least at odds with Ayatollah Khamenei.<\/p>\n Three times \u2014 2017, 2021, and 2024 \u2014 Mr. Ahmadinejad tried to run for his previous job, but each time Iran\u2019s Guardian Council, a group of civilian and Islamic jurists, blocked his presidential campaign. Mr. Ahmadinejad has accused senior Iranian officials of corruption or bad governance and become a critic of the government in Tehran. While he never was an overt dissident, the regime began to treat him as a potentially destabilizing element.<\/p>\n Mr. Ahmadinejad\u2019s ties to the west are far murkier.<\/p>\n