Fresh questions have been raised over US and Israeli efforts to depose the Iranian regime after it was claimed that Israel wanted to install former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power. According to a New York Times report, Israel bombed a security building near his Tehran home to help him escape house arrest, but Ahmadinejad became uneasy about the operation.
Ahmadinejad’s turbulent presidency from 2005 to 2013 was marked by incendiary attacks on Israel, but he later recast himself as a critic of the regime after falling out with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The plans were widely seen as implausible or as disinformation, but the episode shows that the US and Israel overestimated opposition to the regime and their own ability to bring it down with airstrikes.
Donald Trump, facing domestic anger over rising gas prices, has been seeking to extricate himself from the conflict but is considering more airstrikes to force Tehran to meet his terms. Trump said on Monday that he had delayed a fresh attack after Gulf leaders intervened, but on Tuesday he held a lengthy phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu covering the potential resumption of hostilities.
Tehran, which believes its stranglehold on Western economies is tightening, refuses to agree to Washington’s demands on domestic uranium enrichment. It wants to delay negotiations on the future of its nuclear programme and instead focus on lifting sanctions in return for ending its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The US has mounted a counter-blockade of Iran’s ports to stop its oil shipments, which principally go to China.
Iranian media treated the New York Times report with scepticism, saying the former president had not been under house arrest. At the time of the initial Israeli attacks on Tehran on 28 February, there were reports that Ahmadinejad had been killed in a strike on his home, but it later emerged that a security outpost outside his home had been hit. Ahmadinejad would be an unlikely ally for Netanyahu because of his Holocaust denial and virulently anti-Israeli policies.
