A covert Israeli operation to recruit former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the figurehead of a post-regime government has been detailed in simultaneous investigations by The New York Times, Haaretz and Israel's Channel 13. The plan, code-named 'Puss in Boots', envisioned using Ahmadinejad—once the face of Tehran's most virulent anti-Israel rhetoric—as a Persian Boris Yeltsin who would recognise Israel and join the Abraham Accords after the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. The operation reached its climax on 28 February, when Mossad agents extracted Ahmadinejad from his residence following an Israeli airstrike and moved him to a safe house inside Iran, according to American, Israeli and Iranian officials cited in the reports. The extraction was to coincide with a Kurdish ground offensive through the Iran-Iraq border, but the entire scheme unravelled within days, leaving Ahmadinejad under house arrest by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence wing.

Viewed from Tehran, the revelations have been met with blanket denials. Ahmadinejad's office issued a statement dismissing the claims as 'completely false' and 'Hollywood-style' psychological warfare designed to sow internal division. Iranian state television broadcast footage of the former president attending a memorial ceremony for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the February strikes, in what analysts in the region interpret as an effort by the regime to project normalcy and avoid acknowledging a deep security breach. Iranian officials, speaking anonymously to Western media, confirmed the house arrest but insisted Ahmadinejad was never a willing collaborator, characterising his contacts with Israeli intelligence as a trap he walked into out of political desperation.

Israeli security sources, as relayed by Haaretz and Channel 13, describe a multi-year cultivation effort that began with Ahmadinejad's post-presidential turn against the clerical establishment. The Mossad allegedly financed his travel and accommodation, using environmental conferences in Guatemala and at Budapest's Ludovika University as cover for meetings with agents. Then-Mossad director David Barnea personally travelled to the Hungarian capital in 2024 to meet Ahmadinejad. The operational plan, according to these accounts, called for Israeli and American strikes on IRGC positions along the Iraqi border to open a corridor for Kurdish fighters, who would then advance toward Tehran, triggering a mass uprising. The scheme collapsed after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, viewing Kurdish empowerment as a strategic threat, persuaded US President Donald Trump to withdraw support, while internal Israeli military assessments had already deemed the plan unrealistic.

The dossier now sits at an impasse. Ahmadinejad's public reappearance at Khamenei's funeral—wearing a heavy coat in 32-degree heat and flanked by men described by witnesses as more jailers than bodyguards—has only deepened speculation about his status. The Iranian regime, which has executed thousands for lesser security offences, appears to have chosen to display him rather than admit an enemy agent operated at its core. Independent verification of the competing narratives remains impossible, and no formal investigation has been announced by any government. The episode leaves exposed the extraordinary lengths to which Israeli intelligence was prepared to go in pursuit of regime change, and the enduring capacity of regional rivalries—particularly Turkish-Kurdish tensions—to reshape covert operations in the Middle East.