Israel secretly courted ex-President Ahmadinejad to lead a post-ayatollah Iran, using Budapest climate conference as a front
A years-long Israeli intelligence effort to turn Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into a post-regime Iranian leader involved secret meetings in Budapest, payments for travel, and a daring extraction attempt during the 28 February airstrikes, investigations by The New York Times and Haaretz reveal.
A covert operation unfolds
In early 2024, a Hungarian government official asked Gergely Deli, rector of Budapest’s Ludovika University of Public Service, to host a climate conference and invite an unlikely guest: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s hardline former president. Deli later learned the event was a cover for Ahmadinejad to hold secret talks with Israeli intelligence operatives. The rector, aware of the reputational risk, accepted because he believed he might help save lives.
There are two enemies, and if these enemies want to talk, it's best to do what you can to make them do so.
Ahmadinejad visited the university in 2024 and again in 2025 for these meetings, which formed part of a multi-year Mossad plan to prepare him as an asset who could be installed as Iran’s new leader after a prospective regime collapse.
The Budapest front
David Barnea, then head of Mossad, personally traveled to Budapest in 2024 to meet Ahmadinejad, skipping a consultation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Gaza war to focus on the operation. After the encounter, Mossad informed the CIA it had been in contact with the former president. Israel also paid for his housing and travel, with operatives meeting him several times abroad, including during a 2023 trip to Guatemala. Hungary’s then-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close ally of Israel and Donald Trump, facilitated the logistical cover.
Ahmadinejad’s makeover
Since leaving office in 2013, Ahmadinejad had been marginalized and placed under growing surveillance. Yet he retained a popular support base and began to distance himself from the regime, improve his English, don tailored suits, and tone down anti-Israel rhetoric. He privately compared himself to a potential Iranian Boris Yeltsin, telling confidants he could not return to power while the existing system endured. Mossad saw an opening and began cultivating the relationship as early as 2022.
The February strikes and the extraction
On 28 February 2026, the U.S. and Israel launched military strikes against Iran, killing senior figures including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. That same day, an Israeli airstrike hit Ahmadinejad’s residential compound to eliminate his bodyguards and destroy his armored vehicle. Minutes later, a Mossad car evacuated him, according to U.S. and Israeli officials cited by the New York Times. The broader plan also envisioned arming and training Kurdish forces in Iraq and other minorities to destabilize the regime, but this component did not materialize. The regime proved more resilient than expected, and no popular uprising followed.
Plan unravels and the fallout
Iranian authorities discovered Ahmadinejad’s contacts with Israel, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps placed him under house arrest. He remained out of public view for months, resurfacing only at Khamenei’s funeral procession. On 13 July, the New York Times and Haaretz published detailed accounts of the failed operation, confirming that Israel had spent years trying to turn one of its fiercest enemies into a proxy leader. Ahmadinejad’s fate remains uncertain as the current regime stays in power.
- Israeli intelligence identifies Ahmadinejad as a potential asset after his public distancing from the regime.
- First climate conference at Ludovika University in Budapest; Mossad chief Barnea meets Ahmadinejad in person.
- Ahmadinejad returns to Budapest for a second meeting; addresses the same university after Netanyahu.
- U.S.-Israel strikes begin; airstrike hits Ahmadinejad’s compound to free him, Mossad agents evacuate him.
- New York Times and Haaretz publish full details of the failed operation.
