US, Israel eyed Ahmadinejad to lead Iran after war. Here' why the plot failed

Days after strikes killed Ali Khamenei, Donald Trump said Iran should be led by someone from within. Washington and Israel had Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in mind, sharpening questions over Iran's succession and the widening war.

In Short

• Ali Khamenei was killed in opening strikes, triggering succession crisis
• Israeli strike aimed to free Ahmadinejad from house arrest, NYT report says
• New York Times says war’s political objective failed despite military success

The original strategic objective behind the US-Israel war on Iran went far beyond disabling Tehran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure. It was, at least in its earliest phase, tied to an extraordinary regime-change plan to install former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back in power, a New York Times report has claimed.

However, that plan derailed in a dramatic turn of events, much to the disappointment of the US and Israel.

The plan, according to American officials cited by the newspaper, unravelled almost immediately after the opening strikes — collapsing under operational failures, miscalculations and the resilience of Iran’s political system.

According to the report, "Operation Epic Fury" began with a multipronged ambition: decapitate Iran’s leadership, trigger internal collapse and create conditions for an alternative government in Tehran.

Publicly, the Trump administration maintained the war was intended to destroy Iran’s missile and nuclear capabilities. But the NYT quoted officials as saying that Israel had drawn up a much broader blueprint, and Ahmadinejad — a former hardliner once notorious for calling to "wipe Israel off the map" — was at its centre.

The first blow came in the opening hours of the war. On March 1, Iran confirmed that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed in coordinated US-Israeli strikes, ending his 37-year rule and plunging the Islamic Republic into its most serious succession crisis.

Tehran declared 40 days of mourning as smoke rose over military compounds and government centres across the country.

According to the NYT, Israeli planners had assumed Khamenei’s killing would shatter the regime’s command structure.

Instead, while the strike killed several senior figures, it also reportedly eliminated some officials Washington believed might cooperate in a negotiated transition, undermining its own succession scenario.

PLOT TO FREE AHMADINEJAD

At the same time, another covert operation was unfolding in eastern Tehran.

American officials said an Israeli airstrike hit the street where Ahmadinejad had been under house arrest in the Narmak district.

The target was not his home itself, but the security post manned by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel who were both guarding and restricting him.

Satellite imagery later showed the checkpoint destroyed while Ahmadinejad’s residence remained standing.

The strike injured Ahmadinejad, officials and an associate told the paper, but he survived.

The plan, they said, was effectively to free him and position him as the figurehead of a post-Khamenei order.

An Atlantic report in March had described the operation as “in effect a jailbreak operation.” Ahmadinejad’s associate confirmed that he understood the strike as an effort to liberate him.

AHMADINEJAD DISILLUSIONED

Yet that near-death experience appears to have broken the scheme. The former president reportedly became disillusioned after surviving the attack.

He disappeared from public view soon afterward, and his current whereabouts remain unknown. His withdrawal gutted a central piece of Israel’s regime-change plan.

During his 2005–2013 presidency, he denied the Holocaust, cracked down violently on dissent and pushed Iran’s uranium enrichment programme aggressively.

But in later years, he clashed repeatedly with Khamenei’s inner circle, was barred from running for office, and openly accused top officials of corruption. That estrangement, US officials believed, may have made him useful.

"From the outset, President Trump was clear about his goals for Operation Epic Fury: destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles, dismantle their production facilities, sink their navy, and weaken their proxy," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. "The United States military met or exceeded all of its objectives".

Still, the NYT report says Israel’s broader regime-change design envisioned more than airstrikes.

It included mobilising Kurdish forces, coordinated influence operations and the deliberate collapse of key infrastructure to convince Iranians the regime had lost control. The expectation was that, under chaos, an “alternative government” could emerge.

Almost none of that happened. Iran’s leadership, though shaken, held together.

The expected uprisings failed to materialise. Kurdish forces did not trigger the anticipated front. And Ahmadinejad — the surprise centrepiece of the plan — vanished from the board before he could play any role.

- Ends