US and Israel ‘hoped to install Ahmadinejad as Iran’s leader’

Key points

• Fresh questions have been raised over the US and Israeli effort to depose the Iranian regime after it was claimed that Israel wanted to put the populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power.
• Ahmadinejad’s turbulent presidency, from 2005 to 2013, was marked by incendiary attacks on Israel but he recast himself as a critic of the regime and champion of the poor after falling out with the supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
• It is claimed that Israel bombed a security building close to his Tehran home to help him escape house arrest but he became uneasy about the operation.
• The plans, reported by the New York Times, were widely seen as implausible or as disinformation put out by Ahmadinejad’s supporters or the Israeli intelligence services.
• However, the episode shows that the US and Israel overestimated opposition to the regime and their own ability to bring it down it with airstrikes.