The Controversial Plan for Regime Change in Iran and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The idea started with the United States and Israel, a sort of ambitious, controversial plan for Iran. They wanted regime change in Tehran. And the target? Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . He was a hardliner.

Reports coming out of the New York Times suggested this was the angle. It mirrored some of the strategies seen in Venezuela.

US officials talked about this sort of move. An Israeli air strike targeting Ahmadinejad’s home in Tehran. The supposed goal? Free him from house arrest. Put him in power after the top Iranian leaders were gone.

But things didn't go that way. The plan, it just fell apart quickly.

Days after those Israeli strikes hit the supreme leader and other big figures, President Trump made a public suggestion. Someone from within Iran should take over.

Later, officials sort of admitted they had a specific figure in mind. Ahmadinejad. Even though he had a long history of hating America and Israel.

The US side insisted the strike on his house on the first day was all about getting him out of confinement.

But there was a twist. Officials and an associate of Ahmadinejad said he was injured. He survived. Still, that near-death experience reportedly left him completely disillusioned with the whole regime-change effort.

He hasn't shown up publicly since. Where he is now? It’s unclear.

Ahmadinejad was president from 2005 to 2013. He was known for being very hardline.

During that time, he kept pushing against Israel and the US. He strongly supported Iran’s nuclear program. He also got criticized for trying to silence dissent inside Iran.

Some of his statements were really thorny. Denying the Holocaust. Claiming there were no gay people in Iran. He even attended that thing called “A World Without Zionism.”

These remarks always drew heat from the international side. Satire followed them in Western media.

Yet, some people in Washington thought maybe Ahmadinejad could stabilize things after a collapse. They saw a potential.

Israel, the planners, they had a multi-stage operation in mind. To topple the theocratic government.

Phase one was the strikes. Joint US-Israeli air attacks, killing the top Iranian leadership.

Stage two was about making trouble. Using Israeli influence operations. Getting Kurds to mobilize against Iranian forces.

Israeli planners thought that messing up things—damaging the power grids, creating chaos—would weaken the regime. Create space for some sort of “alternative government.”

The final stage was installing new leaders in Tehran.

Officials said Ahmadinejad had been consulted about this big picture. But how they actually recruited him is still a mystery.

The US side claimed the Israeli Air Force carried out the strike on his house. It targeted the guards watching him, trying to release him from house arrest.

Ahmadinejad’s house wasn't heavily damaged. But satellite images showed a nearby security outpost destroyed.

Iran’s media initially claimed he was killed. But later reports confirmed he survived. Those guards, the ones stationed there? They were killed. They had been protecting and watching him during his confinement.

One article later called the whole thing “in effect a jailbreak operation.”

After leaving office, Ahmadinejad started clashing with the ruling establishment. He fought them openly.

He tried to run for president in 2017, 2021, and 2024. But the Guardian Council blocked him every single time.

Over the years, he openly accused top officials of corruption and bad rule.

He never became a full opposition figure. But the authorities started treating him like a threat. Politically destabilizing.

He mostly stayed restricted to his home in eastern Tehran.

At the same time, rumors started floating around. Links between some of his associates and Western or Israeli intelligence agencies.

His former chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai , got looked at in 2018 for alleged ties to British and Israeli spy agencies.

Ahmadinejad’s actual connections to the West? That part remains fuzzy.

In a 2019 interview, he praised Donald Trump. He called for better relations between Iran and the US.

US officials reportedly still saw him as someone who could handle the mess after regime change. One associate mentioned in the NYT said American officials saw him in a role kind of like Delcy Rodriguez after Venezuela’s leadership went down.

In recent years, he made several international trips. Guatemala in 2023. Then Hungary in 2024 and 2025. Hungary, remember, has close ties with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

He came back from Budapest right before the war started. He kept a pretty low profile during all that fighting.

His silence about Israel, a country he always painted as Iran’s main enemy, caused speculation on social media.

Apart from the bombing and the supreme leader’s death, much of that whole regime-change strategy just didn't work out how the Israeli planners hoped.

Iran’s government managed to survive the first few months. Despite the heavy attacks and all the political pressure.

That whole situation showed what critics saw as a massive miscalculation. Both the US and Israel missed how tough Iran actually was. Still, some Israeli officials kept holding out hope that the operation could have succeeded.