Iran: Alleged Ahmadinejad plot highlights info war

Two separate reports, one published recently by the US daily The New York Times and the other by the Israeli daily Haaretz, have reignited debate over Israel's thinking about regime change in Iran.

They have also raised questions over the role of ultraconservative former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad— who served two terms from 2005 to 2013 — in Iranian politics.

According to the reports, Israeli officials allegedly explored installing Ahmadinejad as a possible figurehead in a post-Islamic Republic scenario, with efforts reportedly intensifying during the war and involving secret contacts in Hungary.

The reports have attracted attention partly because of their sensational details.

They claim that Ahmadinejad was moved to a safe house after his compound was hit by an Israeli air strike on February 28, 2026, and that David Barnea, the former chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence service, personally oversaw part of the contact effort, which reportedly included a meeting in Budapest.

Haaretz also wrote that the operation involved much more than Ahmadinejad and included infiltration plans inside Iran, contacts with minority groups and that there was also discussion of a broader destabilization strategy.

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Iran's former leader denies reports

The details have not been independently verified and remain unconfirmed. However, Ahmadinejad's office has reportedly rejected the claims, describing them as "absurd" and "completely false."

Babak Dorbeiki, a London-based political analyst and former official at Iran's Strategic Research Center, told DW that the first task was now to separate three different questions: the accuracy of the reporting itself, Ahmadinejad's real place in Iranian politics today and the political function of publishing such stories.

"There is no public and independent evidence that can conclusively confirm or reject the details of this narrative," he said. "So it can neither be accepted without question nor simply dismissed because it has been denied."

Dorbeiki argued that Ahmadinejad still had a social base and considerable unmistakable political ambition, but that this should not be confused with real power.

In his view, the former president has been pushed away from the core institutions of the Islamic Republic since roughly 2010, including the Office of the Supreme Leader, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Guardian Council and much of the conservative camp.

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Who benefits from the narrative?

Ahmadinejad's repeated disqualifications from contesting in recent presidential elections, Dorbeiki said, show that key players calling the shots in Iran have little interest in restoring him to the center of decision-making.

In Dorbeiki's reading, the reports should not be understood simply as an attempt to promote Ahmadinejad as a future ruler by Israel. "Even if we assume the reporting is correct, at most it shows that at one point he was one of the options under consideration, not that he is about to return to power," he said.

For him, the more revealing question is who benefits from such a narrative. One possibility, he said, is that the Iranian state could use it to reinforce the idea that even a former president is vulnerable to foreign penetration, helping to justify tighter security measures and entrenching a deeper climate of suspicion.

Another is that critics of Ahmadinejad could use it to reinforce their argument that his political legacy was always costly for Iran.

And for Israel, Dorbeiki said, the publication of such a story may itself serve an intelligence purpose by signaling that it has reach, access and the ability to generate mistrust and paranoia inside Iran, whether or not every operational detail is correct.

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Part of the wider information war?

Vahid Heroabadi, a former Shiite cleric who lives in Europe and is now a critic of the Islamic Republic, told DW that outside powers looking for regime change usually search for figures with mobilizational capacity.

But he did not believe Ahmadinejad fits that role in today's Iran. "Those who can play a role in the present or future of Iran are people who are connected to the IRGC," he said. "Because Ahmadinejad no longer has that connection and does not have its support, he cannot really act as a decisive political player."

Heroabadi, who said he was once close to Ahmadinejad's administration, argued that even in the event of a collapse, no foreign government wanting to impose regime change would be likely to rely on such a well-known and polarizing populist figure.

In his view, Ahmadinejad is not a credible bridge either to the Iranian public or to the security authorities that would matter in case of a transition of power.

The reports about the former president are revelatory about the wider information war surrounding Iran, about the narratives intelligence services may want to project and about how outside actors imagine post-Islamic Republic scenarios in Iran, even if these remain far from political reality.

They show how much the struggle over Iran has become a struggle over narratives and perception. In that battle, even an implausible story can become useful if it unsettles enough people.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru