Israel, US planned for former Iranian president to succeed Khamenei - report

The United States and Israel went into the war against Iran with a plan to install former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline politician once known for calling to "wipe Israel off the map," as the country's new leader following the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to a New York Times report.

The Israeli-developed plan envisioned a multistage collapse of the Iranian government beginning with the opening US-Israeli aerial campaign that killed Khamenei and other top officials. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about the plan, the report said. 

According to the report, an Israeli strike on Ahmadinejad's home in Tehran on the opening day of the war had been designed to free him from house arrest. The former president was injured but survived the strike and was described by an associate as having effectively been the target of "a jailbreak operation" intended to eliminate IRGC personnel guarding him. After the near miss, the report said, Ahmadinejad became disillusioned with the regime change plan.

Ahmadinejad has not been seen publicly since the strike, and his current whereabouts and condition are unknown, according to US officials briefed on the matter who spoke to the New York Times.

While Ahmadinejad had clashed with the regime's leaders in recent years and had been placed under close watch by Iranian authorities, he was known during his tenure as president from 2005 to 2013 for calls to wipe Israel off the map, strong support for Iran's nuclear program, and the violent suppression of internal dissent during the 2009 Green Movement protests. Some US officials briefed on the plan were reportedly skeptical that putting Ahmadinejad back into power was viable.

How Ahmadinejad was recruited to take part in the effort remains unclear. He had reportedly traveled to Hungary and Guatemala in the period before the war, visits the report noted were viewed as signaling closer ties with Israel.

The report linked the plan to comments made by US President Donald Trump in the opening days of the war, when he publicly mused that it would be best if "someone from within" Iran took over the country. 

Mossad Director David Barnea reportedly told associates that the plan "had a very good chance of succeeding" had events unfolded as intended. An associate of Ahmadinejad quoted in the report said Washington viewed him as someone who could manage "Iran's political, social, and military situation" and play "a very important role" in a future government.

The newspaper said the broader regime-change strategy quickly unraveled. After the Israeli strikes and a planned Kurdish mobilization that did not materialize, Israel reportedly assessed that Iran's regime would be sufficiently destabilized to collapse under political pressure and infrastructure damage, allowing an alternative government to take charge.