Geopolitics makes strange bedfellows, but some alliances defy logic. The recent disclosure of a secret US and Israeli plan to back Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to run Iran sounds like a bad spy novel. He is the same hardliner who spent his presidency from 2005 to 2013 calling to wipe Israel off the map. He denied the Holocaust and accelerated Tehran's nuclear program.
Yet, a bombshell report from The New York Times reveals that Washington and Jerusalem eyed Ahmadinejad as the centerpiece for a post-war Iranian government. The secret operation unfolded during the military strikes in February 2026. Code-named Operation Epic Fury, it shows how far Western intelligence will go when trying to engineer regime change. It also shows how badly they can miscalculate.
Inside Operation Epic Fury
The public was told that the February 2026 strikes aimed to destroy Iran's ballistic missile infrastructure, sink its navy, and neutralize its regional proxies. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly repeated these points. But behind closed doors, Mossad and American planners designed something much bigger. They wanted to dismantle the entire theocratic government.
The strategy depended on three distinct phases of government collapse. The plan moved into motion on February 28, 2026, when an Israeli airstrike killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Western strategists believed that eliminating Khamenei would shatter the regime's command structure. They expected a chaotic power vacuum. To fill that vacuum, they needed an insider with a base of support who could manage Iran's complicated political, social, and military landscape.
They chose Ahmadinejad.
The Jailbreak That Blew Up the Plan
Ahmadinejad was not living freely in Tehran. He had spent years under house arrest in the Narmak district after clashing with Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He spent his time accusing top officials of massive corruption, which led the regime to disqualify him from running in recent elections.
Intelligence officials saw his isolation as an opportunity.
On the opening day of the war, an Israeli airstrike hit Ahmadinejad’s street. The target was not his home. Satellites showed that the bomb wiped out the IRGC security post guarding and restricting him. An Atlantic report later described the operation as a high-stakes jailbreak.
[Target: IRGC Security Post] ---> Destroyed by Israeli Airstrike
[Target: Ahmadinejad Residence] ---> Left Standing
The operation went sideways almost immediately. The blast destroyed the checkpoint but also injured Ahmadinejad. He survived the explosion, but the near-death experience broke his commitment to the plot. An associate confirmed that Ahmadinejad understood the strike was meant to free him, but he became disillusioned with the chaotic reality of the Western plan.
He vanished from public view right after the attack. His current whereabouts are unknown.
Why Washington Bet on a Hardliner
It seems crazy to pick a former anti-Western populist to lead a new government. But American and Israeli strategists saw him as a tool for stabilization. They compared the idea to Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela, who worked closely with the Trump administration after US forces targeted Nicolas Maduro.
Ahmadinejad had certain traits that planners found useful.
- Internal Legitimacy: He remained highly popular with Iran's working class and rural poor.
- Administrative Experience: He ran the country for eight years and knew how the bureaucracy worked.
- Anti-Regime Credentials: His fierce public fights with Khamenei gave him genuine anti-establishment credit.
- Pragmatism: In a 2019 interview, Ahmadinejad praised Donald Trump as a "man of action" and a "businessman" who understood cost-benefit calculations.
Western planners thought his nationalism would keep the country together while he cut deals with the West. Intelligence agencies also noticed his recent travels to Hungary and Guatemala, which were later interpreted as quiet efforts to maintain lines of communication with international networks.
The Failure of External Engineering
Operation Epic Fury failed because it repeated old intelligence mistakes. It relied on a flawed reading of Iran's internal power structure.
The airstrike that killed Khamenei did not trigger a total collapse. It actually killed several moderate or pragmatic Iranian officials who might have helped negotiate a transition. By killing the very people who could talk to the West, the strikes united the surviving leadership.
The other parts of the plan failed too. Coordinated influence operations did not spark popular uprisings. Kurdish forces in the border regions did not open the military fronts that Western planners expected.
Mossad Director David Barnea told associates that the plan had a good chance of succeeding if events had unfolded as intended. But they didn't. The Iranian political system proved more durable than expected, and their chosen leader walked off the chessboard before the game even started.
Western intelligence agencies keep trying to orchestrate neat transitions in foreign capitals. This failed plot shows that they usually end up creating more chaos instead.
If you are analyzing global risk or tracking Middle Eastern policy, stop looking for clean transitions during foreign interventions. Analyze the institutional resilience of a state rather than focusing only on its top leaders. Track the movements of sidelined political figures who still hold domestic popularity. They are often the ones targeted for covert operations when a conflict begins.
