A former president’s reported dealings with Israeli intelligence expose fractures inside the Islamic Republic. An investigation based on political testimony, security accounts, public statements, and reported intelligence findings.
In the first hours of a devastating assault on Tehran, an attack in the eastern district of Narmak attracted little attention. Explosions elsewhere in the capital were killing senior commanders and striking symbols of state power. Against that wider destruction, the reported bombing of a security building near the home of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad initially appeared to be one more entry in a rapidly expanding list of targets.
The building housed members of Ahmadinejad’s protection detail. Vehicles assigned to his security team were reportedly left beneath the rubble. Three bodyguards and two police officers were said to have been killed. Early reports suggested that Ahmadinejad himself might also be dead.
But the former president survived.
Days later, reporting attributed to informed sources said he had escaped what was described as an assassination attempt and had been transferred to a secure location. The explanation raised more questions than it answered. How had a precision strike killed members of his protection team while leaving him unharmed? Had he left the building immediately before the attack? Had someone warned him? Was he inside the target area at all?
A more extraordinary possibility subsequently emerged. According to accounts cited by international and Israeli media, the strike may not have been an unsuccessful attempt to kill Ahmadinejad. It may have been part of an operation to remove the security forces surrounding him and extract him from the control of the Islamic Republic.
Those reports placed Ahmadinejad at the centre of an alleged Israeli plan known as Operation Puss in Boots. The plan, as described, sought to combine military strikes, intelligence penetration, an armed Kurdish uprising in western Iran, and the political reappearance of a former president who still retained limited support among some working-class and lower-income constituencies.
The alleged objective was not merely to weaken the Islamic Republic. It was to create a transition figure from inside the system, someone who could claim familiarity with the state, speak to domestic audiences, and present himself as an alternative to both the ruling establishment and exiled opposition groups.
The man reportedly considered for that role was one of the most polarising figures in the history of the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad had risen through conservative institutions, benefited from the support of Ali Khamenei, defended the nuclear program, denied the Holocaust, and made hostility toward Israel a defining feature of his presidency. His disputed re-election in 2009 became inseparable from mass protest, state violence, arrests, and the suppression of the Green Movement.
Yet after leaving office, Ahmadinejad entered a prolonged conflict with the institutions that had elevated him. His closest allies were imprisoned. His attempts to return to the presidency were repeatedly blocked. He accused the judiciary of corruption, challenged the political immunity of the supreme leader, criticised election engineering, and alleged that Israeli intelligence had penetrated the highest levels of the Islamic Republic’s security establishment.
The allegations concerning Operation Puss in Boots transformed those earlier statements. Ahmadinejad had once claimed that officials responsible for countering Mossad had themselves become Israeli agents. Years later, he was accused of entering into contact with the same intelligence service.
The available account remains incomplete and contested. Ahmadinejad has not publicly provided a detailed explanation of the alleged meetings, the strike in Narmak, his disappearance, or his reported detention. Many operational details come from unnamed political, security, diplomatic, Iranian, American, and Israeli sources. Several claims cannot be independently established from the material available.
But taken together, the allegations expose more than the possible transformation of a former president. They reveal the depth of the fractures inside the Islamic Republic, the vulnerability of its political elite to foreign recruitment, and the extent to which personal ambition can overtake ideological loyalty.
The story is not simply about whether Ahmadinejad cooperated with Israel. It is about how a politician created by the system came to see that same system as the principal obstacle to his return to power, and how a foreign intelligence service may have tried to convert that resentment into a mechanism for regime change.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was born on 28 October 1956 in Aradan, near Garmsar. His family later moved to Tehran. His father was a metalworker, a background Ahmadinejad repeatedly incorporated into his political identity. He cultivated the image of a modest man from the lower social classes, distinct from the wealthy clerical families, technocrats, and political dynasties that had dominated much of the Islamic Republic.
He studied at the Iran University of Science and Technology and obtained a doctorate in transportation engineering and planning. Before becoming a national figure, he served in local and provincial positions, including as governor of the newly established Ardabil province in the 1990s.
His progress was neither accidental nor entirely independent. Ahmadinejad rose through networks connected to conservative political factions, revolutionary institutions, security circles, and a generation of officials who had consolidated influence after the Iran-Iraq war. His later presentation as an outsider obscured the extent to which his career had developed inside the governing system.
His national breakthrough came in 2003, when a conservative Tehran City Council selected him as mayor. At City Hall, Ahmadinejad presented himself as the opposite of an elite technocrat. He wore inexpensive clothes, emphasised his ordinary lifestyle, and cultivated direct contact with religious and lower-income constituencies.
The simplicity was politically calculated. Tehran’s municipality offered access to resources, neighbourhood networks, public events, religious organisations, and a platform from which a mayor could become a national candidate. Ahmadinejad used the office to build an image that combined populism, religious conservatism, economic grievance, and hostility toward the established political class.
In the 2005 presidential election, he campaigned on justice, opposition to corruption, resistance to privilege, and the promise that oil wealth would reach ordinary households. His principal opponent in the second round was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Republic.
The election became a confrontation between carefully constructed symbols. Rafsanjani represented experience, wealth, hierarchy, and the old order. Ahmadinejad represented simplicity, youth, militancy, and resentment against elites. Official results credited Ahmadinejad with approximately 62 percent of the vote.
His victory brought conservative forces back into full control of the executive branch. It also gave Khamenei a president whose language appeared closely aligned with the ideological claims of the leadership.
Ahmadinejad soon adopted an aggressive foreign policy. He treated the nuclear program as a matter of national dignity, intensified confrontation with Western governments, and used extreme rhetoric against Israel. His statements about the Holocaust and the future of Israel drew international condemnation and made him one of the most recognisable representatives of the Islamic Republic abroad.
At home, his administration benefited from exceptionally high oil revenues. The government distributed loans, expanded provincial projects, increased cash spending, and promoted the idea that the presidency was transferring national wealth directly to neglected communities.
These policies maintained support among segments of the population, but they also contributed to higher liquidity, inflation, economic instability, and a deeper reliance on oil income. The government’s economic populism often substituted immediate distribution for durable institutional reform.
The decisive crisis came in 2009. Ahmadinejad sought a second term against Mir Hossein Mousavi, who mobilised large numbers of urban voters, young people, professionals, and members of the middle class. Official results declared Ahmadinejad the winner with approximately 63 percent of the vote.
Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and millions of protesters rejected the outcome and accused the authorities of manipulating the election. Demonstrations developed into the Green Movement, one of the most significant political challenges faced by the Islamic Republic since 1979.
Security forces, police, and the Basij suppressed the protests. Large numbers of people were arrested. Protesters were killed. Political organisations were dismantled, public space was militarised, and the judiciary became a central instrument for containing dissent.
Ahmadinejad remained in office, supported by Khamenei at the moment when the political system faced its most serious legitimacy crisis in years. His name became inseparable from the repression, even if the operational command of the crackdown extended across institutions beyond the presidency.
The aftermath of 2009 also marked the beginning of Ahmadinejad’s separation from the leadership.
The first major conflict concerned Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, Ahmadinejad’s closest political ally. Mashaei had caused controversy with statements about friendship with the people of Israel and his emphasis on an Iranian rather than strictly clerical-Islamic conception of national identity.
Ahmadinejad appointed Mashaei as first vice president. Khamenei directly ordered the appointment revoked. Ahmadinejad eventually complied, but he refused to remove Mashaei from his inner circle.
For the leadership establishment, the dispute suggested that Ahmadinejad was constructing a personal faction whose loyalty ran toward himself and Mashaei rather than toward the traditional hierarchy of the Islamic Republic. Conservative critics labelled the group the deviant current, transforming an internal political dispute into an accusation of ideological and security disloyalty.
Two years later, the conflict over Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi pushed the relationship toward rupture. Ahmadinejad attempted to dismiss Moslehi, but Khamenei ordered that the minister remain in office. In protest, Ahmadinejad withdrew from government meetings for 11 days.
The episode became known as the 11-day retreat. Hardline figures described it as open defiance of the supreme leader.
After Ahmadinejad’s second term ended, the institutions of the Islamic Republic moved steadily against his network. Hamid Baghaei and Mashaei were arrested and convicted. Ahmadinejad was denied the possibility of returning to the presidency. His political circle was weakened through prosecution, exclusion, and surveillance.
He responded by attacking the institutions that had once protected him.
He accused the judiciary and the Larijani family of corruption and abuse of power. He described the judiciary as unaccountable and questioned the legitimacy and competence of its leadership. He claimed to possess information concerning wrongdoing by senior officials and threatened to disclose it.
His criticism later reached Khamenei directly. Ahmadinejad challenged the proposition that the leader’s words should automatically end political debate. He argued that disagreement with the supreme leader should not turn a citizen into an enemy and insisted that leadership power required corresponding accountability.
He rejected the idea that the supreme leader could be treated as divinely appointed and therefore exempt from responsibility for the consequences of state decisions. In a political structure where successes were frequently attributed to leadership and failures assigned to elected governments, this was an attack on the central mechanism of political immunity.
Ahmadinejad called for the dismissal of the head of the judiciary, the release of prisoners, and elections without interference by the Guardian Council, military organisations, or security agencies.
The contradiction was profound. The same politician who had benefited from the contested election of 2009 now demanded electoral freedom after the system turned against him.
Khamenei publicly advised Ahmadinejad not to run in the 2017 presidential election, warning that his candidacy could divide the country. Ahmadinejad registered anyway and was disqualified. The Guardian Council blocked him again in 2021 and 2024.
The former president who had once been promoted as the authentic voice of the revolution was no longer permitted to participate even in the controlled electoral process of the Islamic Republic.
His marginalisation did not eliminate his political ambition. It changed its direction.
Ahmadinejad’s most consequential accusations concerned the security institutions of the Islamic Republic.
In 2021, he claimed that the senior official responsible for countering Israeli operations inside the Ministry of Intelligence had himself been an Israeli agent. He alleged that Israeli penetration had reached the highest levels of the intelligence, security, and governmental system.
According to Ahmadinejad, that penetration helped make possible operations including attacks on nuclear facilities, the assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and the removal of the nuclear archive from a warehouse in Tehran.
He argued that after sensitive documents were stolen, officials constructed false scenarios to conceal the real network behind the operation. He questioned how large quantities of classified material could pass through checkpoints, borders, and controlled transport routes without assistance from inside the system.
Ahmadinejad also described a separate theft involving sensitive documents from the space organisation. He alleged that individuals entered through the roof, opened a safe in the office of the organisation’s director, and removed important records. He claimed that security officials later presented the incident as an ordinary burglary, attributed it to common criminals, and concealed the true method of entry.
The wider implication was that the agencies responsible for investigating penetration were also capable of obscuring it.
These accusations carried unusual weight because Ahmadinejad had served eight years as president. He had worked with the Ministry of Intelligence, the Revolutionary Guard, the Supreme National Security Council, and the supreme leader’s office. He was not an external observer describing institutions he had never encountered.
Yet his claims raised unanswered questions. How had he obtained the information? Had former security officials or disgruntled insiders supplied it? Had he known about the alleged penetrations while in office? If so, why had he remained silent? Why did he avoid publicly naming the officials he accused?
His critics could reasonably interpret the statements as part of a power struggle. Ahmadinejad had begun exposing alleged misconduct only after his allies were prosecuted and his own path back to office was closed. His denunciations could represent retaliation rather than reform.
But the distinction is not absolute. A politically motivated accusation may still contain accurate information. Personal revenge can produce genuine disclosures, especially when the speaker has spent years inside the institutions being accused.
The allegations also increased the potential value of Ahmadinejad to a foreign intelligence service. He had knowledge of government procedures, security rivalries, elite personalities, state weaknesses, and the internal culture of the Islamic Republic. He retained name recognition and a limited domestic following. He had reasons to resent the leadership and may have believed that only the collapse of the existing arrangement could restore his political relevance.
According to later reporting, the process of establishing contact with Ahmadinejad developed over several years.
One early encounter may have occurred during a 2023 trip to Guatemala. Ahmadinejad intended to attend an environmental conference. Iranian security officials initially prevented him from leaving the country. He staged a protest at the airport, generating publicity, and was eventually allowed to travel.
The following year, a more significant event allegedly took place in Budapest. Officials in Hungary reportedly asked the Ludovika University of Public Service to organise a climate conference and invite Ahmadinejad.
According to the account, the conference provided cover for a confidential meeting with Israeli intelligence officers. The alleged meeting was considered important enough for Mossad director David Barnea to travel personally to Budapest.
Mossad reportedly informed the United States Central Intelligence Agency about its relationship with Ahmadinejad. American officials cited in the reporting said that Israel later paid some of his travel and housing expenses and that Israeli agents met him in several countries.
The precise terms of the relationship remain unknown. It is not clear when the first direct approach occurred, who served as intermediary, what Ahmadinejad was told, or what commitments he allegedly made. There is no public record showing whether he regarded the contacts as intelligence cooperation, political negotiation, contingency planning, or an attempt to manipulate foreign governments for his own return.
Another reported meeting occurred in June 2025, days before the beginning of an Israeli war against the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad again travelled to Budapest. Members of his Revolutionary Guard protection detail reportedly told Iranian authorities that he separated from them at least twice and disappeared for several hours.
When questioned, he said he had met university professors. The later reporting alleged that those meetings were again with Israeli intelligence personnel.
Inside Iran, the Revolutionary Guard Intelligence Organization had reportedly become suspicious of Ahmadinejad well before the operation. His public letters to Donald Trump in 2017 and later to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had increased concern.
From the perspective of the security establishment, Ahmadinejad was no longer merely a dissatisfied former president. He was communicating independently with foreign leaders, making controversial international trips, and at times leaving the supervision of his government protection team.
Israel, meanwhile, had reportedly identified the same political vulnerabilities. Ahmadinejad had been excluded from three presidential elections. His closest associates had been imprisoned. His confrontation with Khamenei had become public. He appeared to understand that there was no institutional route back to power while the existing leadership structure remained intact.
A former associate cited in the reporting said money was not Ahmadinejad’s primary motivation. Power was.
According to that account, Ahmadinejad feared that if war or political collapse removed the government, the United States and Israel might install an opposition figure from abroad who lacked knowledge of Iran and would deepen disorder. He allegedly imagined himself in the role of Boris Yeltsin, an insider who emerged from a disintegrating political system and claimed the authority to manage the transition.
He was also said to have considered recognising Israel and normalising relations through the framework of the Abraham Accords if he returned to power.
For a politician identified internationally with Holocaust denial and calls for Israel’s destruction, such a shift would have been extraordinary. But it was not necessarily inconsistent with Ahmadinejad’s political evolution.
His anti-Israel rhetoric had become less prominent after leaving office. He increasingly criticised the use of violence against citizens, denounced corruption, and attempted to construct a new public image. He adopted more formal clothing, studied English, received ordinary citizens in his office, and wrote to ministries on behalf of people seeking loans or administrative assistance.
The transformation did not establish that he had embraced liberalism or democracy. It may have represented a strategic rebranding by a politician seeking constituencies beyond the hardline base that first elevated him.
Ahmadinejad still held a seat on the Expediency Council and had attended one of its meetings shortly before the war. He retained supporters among some lower-income groups and workers. For foreign planners comparing internal political figures with opposition leaders who had lived abroad for years, that residual network could have appeared valuable.
He was not an outsider promising to understand the state. He had already governed it.
The alleged plan described by Israeli and American reporting was exceptionally ambitious.
Operation Puss in Boots reportedly aimed to combine Israeli intelligence operations, attacks on the Islamic Republic, the mobilisation of thousands of armed Kurdish fighters, territorial pressure in western Iran, and the eventual creation of a political alternative centred on Ahmadinejad.
The Kurdish forces were expected to move from northern Iraq into western Iran, seize territory, and create an expanding rebellion. The uprising would begin on the periphery, spread toward major cities, and place the government under simultaneous military and political pressure.
The concept resembled attempts in other regional conflicts to exploit local armed groups, weakened central authority, and rapid political collapse. It assumed that the Islamic Republic could be destabilised through a combination of external strikes, internal revolt, elite decapitation, and public mobilisation.
Ahmadinejad’s role was reportedly political rather than military. At a decisive moment, he would appear as a nationally recognised figure from inside the former governing structure. He could call on state employees, military personnel, or citizens to abandon the existing leadership and support a transition.
His previous service as president would provide a claim to administrative competence. His break with Khamenei could be presented as evidence of independence. His residual popularity could offer a domestic element missing from foreign-backed transition plans.
The entire operation depended on timing, coordination, and confidence among actors who had different interests.
Kurdish groups would have to believe that external support was reliable and that participation would not leave them exposed to retaliation. Israeli planners would have to assume that military strikes would weaken the state quickly enough to permit territorial advances. Ahmadinejad would have to accept that cooperation with Israel would not permanently destroy his credibility inside Iran.
Most importantly, he would have to act publicly at the correct moment.
The strike in Narmak on 9 Esfand 1404 was reportedly intended to initiate the most sensitive phase.
An Israeli air attack struck the compound near Ahmadinejad’s home. The building used by his protection team and an armoured vehicle outside the residence were destroyed. Several guards and police officers were killed.
Soon afterward, a black Peugeot arrived. Ahmadinejad reportedly entered the car and was driven away.
Unnamed Iranian and American officials familiar with the operation claimed that the driver was a Mossad operative who transported him to a secret safe house inside Iran.
If accurate, the scene represented the practical culmination of years of contact. Israel had attacked the security perimeter around a former president, removed him from the location, and placed him inside a covert network operating within the country.
But the extraction also appears to have caused the operation to unravel.
According to the reporting, Ahmadinejad was disturbed by the chaotic and violent manner of his removal. The political scenario he may have imagined in private meetings was suddenly transformed into an air strike, the deaths of his guards, and an emergency transfer by foreign intelligence operatives.
The distinction may have been decisive. Negotiating about a hypothetical transition was one thing. Entering a vehicle while members of his protection team lay dead was another.
The attack placed Ahmadinejad inside the reality of the operation. His survival was now connected to the same military campaign killing officials, soldiers, and civilians elsewhere. Any public appearance alongside the attackers could make him look not like a transitional national figure, but like a politician delivered to power by a foreign state.
The Kurdish component also failed to materialise. Armed groups did not begin the anticipated campaign from northern Iraq. No rebellion advanced through western Iran. Major cities did not fall. Ahmadinejad did not issue the expected call.
Approximately ten days after the war began, Western intelligence services reportedly concluded that the plan would not proceed. Individuals previously in contact with Mossad stopped responding.
Ahmadinejad then left the safe house under circumstances that remain unexplained. It is not known who helped him, whether he contacted officials of the Islamic Republic, or whether security services discovered his location.
The possibility that he voluntarily returned to state custody cannot be excluded. Nor can the possibility that elements within the government negotiated his surrender. The available account does not establish whether he abandoned the operation for political, personal, moral, or security reasons.
His disappearance deepened the mystery.
From 9 Esfand 1404 until 15 Tir, no reliable public image of Ahmadinejad appeared. Rumours suggested he had been killed, wounded, detained, placed under house arrest, or kept at a secret location.
He eventually appeared at Khamenei’s funeral. The appearance was brief and highly controlled. Despite the heat, he wore a heavy jacket. A surgical mask rested beneath his chin. He kept his head lowered and stood among men who appeared to be security personnel. He did not speak publicly or explain his absence.
Former presidents Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami were reportedly not invited, while Ahmadinejad was present. His attendance could have been intended to demonstrate loyalty, survival, or reconciliation. But the conditions of the appearance suggested surveillance rather than political rehabilitation.
It was unclear whether those around him were protecting him or preventing him from acting independently.
Four senior officials of the Islamic Republic were later reported as saying that Ahmadinejad was in Revolutionary Guard intelligence custody and under house arrest because authorities had uncovered a significant part of his alleged relationship with Israel.
No transparent judicial process accompanied the allegation. No detailed charges were publicly presented. Ahmadinejad was not shown answering questions before an independent court. The state did not disclose the evidence it allegedly possessed.
The absence of formal accountability was consistent with the sensitivity of the case. A public trial could expose severe counterintelligence failures, reveal how Mossad approached a former president, and force the government to explain why an individual under official protection was able to separate from his guards during foreign travel.
It might also require the Islamic Republic to confront the political history that made such recruitment plausible.
Ahmadinejad was not a marginal figure invented by a foreign intelligence service. He was promoted by the governing system, supported by Khamenei, defended during the 2009 crisis, and celebrated as an ideological representative of the revolution.
If he later cooperated with Israel, the case would represent not merely betrayal by an individual, but failure by the institutions that selected, empowered, and protected him.
Operation Puss in Boots, as described, failed at every decisive level.
The Kurdish forces did not advance. The anticipated uprising did not spread. Ahmadinejad did not issue a public appeal. The Islamic Republic did not collapse according to the projected sequence. The political alternative designed by foreign planners never emerged.
Yet the failure does not make the operation insignificant.
The alleged plan demonstrates how external intelligence services may exploit divisions created by the Islamic Republic itself. Political exclusion, factional prosecutions, manipulated elections, security rivalries, and the personalisation of power can turn former insiders into potential assets.
Ahmadinejad’s political journey captures this process with unusual clarity.
He rose by attacking privilege while benefiting from powerful conservative networks. He won the presidency as a populist outsider while remaining deeply embedded in the state. He survived the 2009 election through the support of the supreme leader and security institutions. He then became a critic of those same institutions when they restricted his authority.
His later denunciations of corruption, judicial abuse, electoral interference, and leadership immunity addressed genuine structural questions. But they were compromised by his own record. He had not opposed the architecture of repression when it protected his presidency. He challenged it after it was used against him.
This does not mean his criticisms were false. It means they were inseparable from ambition.
The same ambiguity applies to the alleged Israeli relationship. Ahmadinejad may have seen himself not as a foreign agent but as a national figure preparing for the collapse of an illegitimate political order. He may have believed he could use Israel without being controlled by it. He may have viewed confidential contacts as political insurance rather than espionage.
Foreign intelligence services, however, recruit through precisely such self-justifications. The most useful assets do not always believe they have betrayed their country. They may believe they are saving it, reforming it, reclaiming power, preventing chaos, or correcting a historical injustice.
Ahmadinejad’s reported identification with Yeltsin is revealing. It suggests he imagined a political opening created by systemic collapse and believed his experience inside the government would make him indispensable.
But Iran was not the Soviet Union, and Ahmadinejad was not a neutral administrator waiting outside a failing structure. He carried responsibility for eight years of governance, economic disruption, international isolation, incendiary rhetoric, and the repression associated with the 2009 crisis.
Any attempt to present him as a democratic transitional figure would confront that record.
The Israeli planners described in the reporting appear to have prioritised recognisability, access, and domestic roots over moral legitimacy. From an intelligence perspective, Ahmadinejad’s contradictions may have been an advantage. His history of hostility toward Israel could protect him from suspicion. His anti-establishment language could appeal to disillusioned citizens. His service inside the state could reassure bureaucrats afraid of total collapse.
The same contradictions ultimately made him unreliable. A man driven by personal ambition could change course when the risks became immediate. A politician seeking to lead a transition could recoil when he realised that the operation would make him appear dependent on Israeli military power.
The Narmak strike may have been the moment when abstraction became consequence. Members of his security team were killed. A foreign operative allegedly removed him from his home. The state was under attack. Whatever assurances he had received, he no longer controlled the process.
His reported withdrawal from the operation illustrates a recurring weakness in covert regime-change planning. Intelligence services may build contact networks, arm local forces, and identify alternative leaders, but they cannot fully control how individuals behave once violence begins.
Political figures recruited in secrecy may not perform under public pressure. Armed groups may refuse to move without stronger guarantees. Populations may not respond to foreign-backed appeals. Governments that appear brittle may retain more coercive capacity than planners expected.
The alleged operation also reveals the degree of Israeli penetration described throughout Ahmadinejad’s own warnings. Meetings in foreign capitals, surveillance of his protection detail, extraction within Tehran, and the movement of an alleged Mossad driver through the capital would all point to a security failure extending across borders and institutions.
If the allegations are accurate, the Revolutionary Guard protected Ahmadinejad while simultaneously suspecting him. His guards accompanied him abroad but reportedly lost contact with him for hours. Intelligence agencies monitored his communications but did not prevent repeated meetings. A foreign service later struck his protection team and allegedly moved him to a safe house inside the country.
This would not be a narrow breach. It would be evidence of a foreign intelligence infrastructure capable of operating around senior former officials and exploiting the gaps between competing security organisations.
The state’s reported response, secret detention and house arrest, may contain the immediate threat, but it does not resolve the institutional problem. Removing Ahmadinejad from public life cannot explain how the alleged relationship began, which officials failed to identify it, whether others were involved, or how many similar channels remain active.
Nor does it erase the political conditions that made the relationship possible.
The Islamic Republic concentrated authority around unelected institutions while limiting peaceful mechanisms for political return. Once Ahmadinejad was excluded, there was no legal path through which his remaining supporters could test his popularity. The Guardian Council repeatedly blocked him. His associates were imprisoned. His disputes with the leadership were treated as security threats.
A system designed to prevent political competition can push elite conflict into secret channels. When former officials cannot compete openly, they may conspire privately. When courts lack independence, prosecutions resemble factional punishment. When election outcomes are controlled, defeated insiders may seek external leverage.
Foreign intelligence services do not create all of these fractures. They identify and exploit them.
Ahmadinejad’s case also challenges the ideological language of loyalty used throughout the Islamic Republic. For years, the state treated protesters, journalists, students, reformists, and civil-society activists as possible instruments of foreign infiltration. Yet some of the most serious allegations of cooperation with hostile intelligence have concerned individuals from inside the revolutionary and security establishment.
The supposed enemy did not need to rely only on dissidents outside the system. It could target ambitious men produced by the system itself.
No final judgment is possible without evidence that has not been made public. The alleged meetings, financial support, extraction, safe house, and transition plan require independent corroboration. The unnamed officials behind many of the claims may have political or intelligence motives. Israeli sources may exaggerate operational reach. Officials of the Islamic Republic may amplify allegations to justify detaining a former rival.
Ahmadinejad’s silence leaves the central questions unresolved.
Did he knowingly enter a relationship with Mossad? Did he agree to serve as the political face of a foreign-backed transition? Did he receive money or logistical support? Did he understand that armed Kurdish forces and Israeli strikes were part of the plan? Why did he leave the reported safe house? What conditions govern his current confinement?
Until those questions are answered, Operation Puss in Boots remains an allegation built from converging but incomplete accounts.
Its symbolic meaning, however, is already clear.
Ahmadinejad was once the president most closely identified with Khamenei’s confrontational project. He defended the nuclear program, attacked Israel, challenged the West, and helped turn the 2009 election into a national rupture. The leadership protected him against millions of protesters.
Years later, he became a critic of the supreme leader, an accuser of the security establishment, and an alleged candidate in an Israeli plan to replace the political order that created him.
The trajectory is not simply ironic. It reveals how loyalty functions in an authoritarian system. Ideological devotion remains valuable only while it serves the distribution of power. Once an insider is excluded, yesterday’s revolutionary can become today’s traitor, and yesterday’s enemy can become tomorrow’s possible sponsor.
Ahmadinejad once warned that the officials assigned to fight Mossad had joined Mossad. The final stage of his political career placed the accusation around him.
The man who built his international identity around erasing Israel was ultimately accused of seeking Israel’s help to redraw the map of power in Tehran.
