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The bombshell New York Times<\/span> report that the U.S. and Israel hoped to install former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the leader of Iran puts the lie to so much of what hawks in the West have been trying to sell their publics about the Iran war.<\/p>\n Despite claims by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Iran war was never about freedom for the Iranian people<\/a>.<\/p>\n That much is obvious thanks to Ahmadinejad\u2019s role in recent Iranian history: In 2009, Iranians rose up against a stolen election in what was known as the Green Movement, which was violently crushed by Iran\u2019s security forces to keep Ahmadinejad in power.<\/p>\n Though a populist, Ahmadinejad at the time dismissed the protests as nothing more than the result of \u201cemotions after a soccer match\u201d or, in another instance, \u201cdirt and dust.\u201d These are not the bona fides of a leader who will lead Iran into democracy.<\/p>\n Reading between the lines of history, Ahmadinejad\u2019s position as a coup leader starts to make sense.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Instead of a campaign for Iranian freedom, this war \u2014 like much of the U.S. and Israel\u2019s last 20 years of going after Iran \u2014 has been about catastrophically weakening Iran<\/a>. Here, reading between the lines of history, Ahmadinejad\u2019s position as an Israeli\u2013U.S.-backed coup leader starts to make sense.<\/p>\n Ahmadinejad had been largely quiet until he suddenly reemerged into headlines on Tuesday with the Times report<\/a>. After killing Iran\u2019s supreme leader in the opening hour of the war, according to the Times, Israel targeted a building on Ahmadinejad\u2019s street, ostensibly to \u201cfree\u201d him from what was effectively either house arrest or the strict monitoring of his movements. According to some reports, the guards keeping watch on Ahmadinejad were indeed killed, but Ahmadinejad himself was injured, too.<\/p>\n How, if the plot had been successful, was Ahmadinejad supposed to take over? Was the assumption that by assassinating the top leadership, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals, Ahmadinejad would be able to gain the support of the rest of the top echelon of the security forces? That would be a far-fetched notion.<\/p>\n While he retained his populist credentials over the years, Ahmadinejad\u2019s clashes with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and with the \u201cnezam,\u201d or regime, over social and political issues lost him whatever support he still had among the military wings and the Basij militia. Those forces \u2014 though they had helped crush the 2009 protests on Ahmadinejad\u2019s behalf \u2014 remained fiercely loyal to Khamenei and the political system of \u201cGuardianship of the Jurist.\u201d<\/p>\n For now, Ahmadinejad is nowhere to be found, raising suspicions that he is in the custody of the IRGC or dead.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to imagine the Iranian president who declared in his first few months in office that \u201cIsrael must vanish from the pages of time\u201d and subsequently questioned the Holocaust being a good choice for Israel. History shows, though, how Ahmadinejad\u2019s eclectic positioning has previously coincided with Israeli interests.<\/p>\n Coming to power after President Mohammad Khatami\u2019s reform movement and his call for \u201cdialog among civilizations,\u201d Ahmadinejad\u2019s stances damaged Iran\u2019s reputation almost beyond repair.<\/p>\n And this was, somewhat ironically, a boon to Israel, whose leaders could point to the malevolent nature of the Islamic Republic. Ahmadinejad was the perfect figurehead for a bogeyman Iran that needed to be taken down a notch.<\/p>\n Israel and its allies in Washington made hay of Ahmadinejad\u2019s every word \u2014 for instance, his sponsorship of a Holocaust denial cartoon contest \u2014\u00a0and succeeded in turning his remarks into the justifications for an unprecedented and devastating sanctions program. Ahmadinejad\u2019s rule was, in so many ways, bad for Iran.<\/p>\n Which is why, even at the time and certainly later, there were suspicions privately aired in Tehran that he could actually be a Mossad asset \u2014 with the caveat, of course, that no hard proof ever emerged. Still, at a time when gaining the trust of the west in nuclear negotiations was paramount, Ahmadinejad was building Israeli hard-liners\u2019 case against talks for them.<\/p>\n Now, of course, the allegation that Ahmadinejad was primed as a coup leader \u2014 the first report from an even remotely reliable outlet of a real link to Israel \u2014 has only added to the rumors, as have his most recent trips abroad, to Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s Hungary and to Guatemala, both allies and supporters of Israel.<\/p>\n Trump himself admitted before this latest revelation that Israel bombed some of the people who were candidates to be an Iranian Delcy Rodr\u00edguez \u2014 the Venezuelan figure who seamlessly took control from kidnapped<\/a> President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro and reportedly is cooperating with the U.S. The most solid hint Trump gave was that he had someone \u201cinside\u201d Iran in mind, dashing the hopes of Iranian royalists.<\/p>\n\n
Good for Israel<\/strong><\/h2>\n