Israel’s ex-Mossad spy chief met Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to groom him as Iran’s new leader

LONDON — Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met with former Mossad chief David Barnea in Budapest in 2024 and 2025, as Israel sought to groom the hardline politician to take over as Iran's leader if the regime in Tehran fell.

The covert effort reflects the high-stakes intelligence war between Israel and Iran, which has long sought to undermine each other's regimes.

The plan failed, the New York Times reported on Monday. Ahmadinejad remains in Iran and was last seen flanked by security guards during the funeral procession for the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last week.

Ahmadinejad served as Iran's president from 2005 to 2013, notorious for his calls to annihilate Israel and for restarting Tehran's uranium enrichment.

He reportedly met Mossad operatives in 2024 and 2025, before Israel and the US launched their war against Iran in February this year, a conflict that spread to other countries in the Middle East as Tehran responded by launching attacks against 10 allies of the US and blocked international shipping, including oil deliveries, in the Strait of Hormuz.

Meetings in Budapest

One of Ahmadinejad’s meetings with Mossad took place in June 2025 in Budapest, shortly before Israel and the US launched strikes against Iranian military and nuclear sites that month. He had also visited the Hungarian capital in April that year.

The meetings were disguised as speaking engagements at Ludovika University of Public Service, where he met Barnea, who until last month was director of Mossad.

The US and Israeli intelligence services had been monitoring Ahmadinejad’s increasing alienation from the Iranian regime. He was disqualified from running for president three times and had become increasingly disillusioned with the very system he once defended and had worked to suppress protests against while in power.

Israel secretly provided funds to him for housing and travel, and Israeli operatives met him abroad on several occasions, including during the trips to Budapest, according to US officials who spoke to the New York Times.

Israel viewed him as a potential asset that could be installed as Iran’s new leader, prompting Barnea to meet him personally in Budapest. The CIA was briefed about the plan.

Ahmadinejad told his associates he could assume the role of a reformer in the event of regime change or war, with the help of a foreign power, in a similar vein to the former Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, and even go so far as to normalize ties with Israel as part of US President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords.

However, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps became suspicious of Ahmadinejad after he sent a public letter to Trump in 2017. The once hardline politician had also changed his appearance; he began to wear tailored suits instead of his trademark oversized khaki windbreaker, groomed his beard, learned English, and reflected on the lyrics of American rap songs in messages posted on social media site X.

Under surveillance in Tehran

Iranian officials suspected he had initiated contact with Mossad in 2023 when he attended an environmental conference in Guatemala which, like Hungary, has very warm ties with Israel.

In an attempt to free him of strict surveillance in Tehran, Israel launched a strike on Ahmadinejad’s compound on Feb. 28, targeting a building and armored vehicle used by his bodyguards.

US and Iranian officials with knowledge of the operation said a car driven by Mossad operatives transported him to a secret safe house in Iran after the strike. However, he was unimpressed by the frantic rescue operation and appeared to grow disillusioned about the Israeli plan to restore him to power, according to the New York Times.

The IRGC had begun investigating him and piecing together his connections to Israel, according to four officials who spoke to the newspaper. He left the safe house in Tehran and is now under house arrest in the custody of the IRGC’s intelligence wing after his interactions with Mossad became public.

The plan's failure may complicate future Israeli attempts to influence Iranian politics. It also sheds light on the lengths to which Mossad went to cultivate a former leader, even as Iran remained a primary adversary. The CIA's awareness of the operation suggests close US-Israel coordination, though the outcome ultimately fell short of Israeli ambitions.