Israel conceived and executed a covert operation to recruit Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president who spent his 2005-2013 term calling for Israel's destruction and denying the Holocaust, as the civilian face of a post-war regime in Tehran. The plan, described by American and Iranian officials to The New York Times and the Israeli daily Haaretz, spanned multiple years and culminated in an extraction mission during the US-Israeli offensive that began on 28 February 2026.

The recruitment trail

The operation was conceived in 2022, according to Haaretz. It gained traction the following year when Ahmadinejad attended an environmental conference in Guatemala, a country with close ties to Israel. Israeli agents used the trip to establish initial contact. The critical breakthrough came in early 2024, when a senior Hungarian official asked Gergely Deli, rector of the Ludovika University of Public Service in Budapest, to invite Ahmadinejad to a climate-change conference.

Deli understood the invitation could damage his reputation and the university's standing, but he accepted the task. The entire event was a front to allow the former Iranian president to meet Israeli intelligence agents.

“When you have two enemies and those enemies want to talk to each other, the best thing you can do is facilitate that conversation in every possible way.”

Barnea in Budapest

Mossad director David Barnea travelled to the Hungarian capital for the 2024 conference and met Ahmadinejad in person. A report in Haaretz suggested Barnea skipped a security meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, convened to discuss the ongoing war in Gaza at one of its most intense phases, in order to focus on the meeting with the former Iranian leader. According to the NYT, the Mossad informed the CIA shortly afterwards that it had established contact with Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad managed to evade his Revolutionary Guard bodyguards on two occasions during that trip. A second meeting took place in Budapest in June 2025, just months before Israel and the United States launched the 12-day bombing campaign.

The February extraction

On 28 February 2026, the day the US-Israeli offensive began, Israeli warplanes struck Ahmadinejad's residential compound. The target was the building housing his bodyguards and his armoured vehicle, not Ahmadinejad himself. The guards were killed. Moments later, a black Peugeot driven by Mossad agents arrived at the scene and transported the former president to a secret safe house inside Iran.

The Israeli government had secretly paid Ahmadinejad's travel and accommodation expenses over the preceding years, and agents met with him on multiple occasions abroad, according to the New York Times.

The plan collapses

The operation unraveled almost as quickly as it was executed. Iranian authorities had already learned of Ahmadinejad's contacts with Israel before the airstrikes, and the IRGC had placed him under house arrest. The Atlantic magazine reported as early as March 2026 that the mission's objective had been to free Ahmadinejad from those movement restrictions.

After reaching the Mossad safe house, Ahmadinejad, shaken by the frenzied rescue and sceptical of the Israeli plan to install him as ruler, left the shelter under circumstances that remain unclear. Four Iranian officials told the NYT that the IRGC subsequently took him into custody. Two former aides stated that Ahmadinejad's primary motivation throughout had been to retain power, not financial gain.

Ahmadinejad disappeared from public view for months. He resurfaced last week, walking in the funeral procession for former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the same 28 February offensive that was meant to sweep Ahmadinejad into power.