NYT: Iran's Ahmadinejad placed under house arrest after alleged Israel contacts

The New York Times reported that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been placed under house arrest on the orders of the intelligence unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, citing four senior Iranian officials. According to the report, Israel ran a years-long intelligence operation that initially sought to recruit Ahmadinejad as an agent and later aimed to position him as Iran's next leader in the event the ruling system fell. The operation included attempts to arrange direct meetings between Ahmadinejad and Israeli officials, with a climate conference planned for early 2024 in Hungary used as cover, the newspaper said. Gergely Deli, rector of the University of Public Service in Hungary, told the Times he was told the conference would serve as a venue for secret talks between Ahmadinejad and Israeli intelligence. Former Shin Bet chief David Barnea traveled to Budapest to meet Ahmadinejad, and Israel is said to have made secret payments to his spokesman, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, over several years. Israeli agents met with Javanfekr multiple times before Israel launched its wide-scale attack on Iran on June 13, 2025, the report said. After Ahmadinejad returned to Iran, IRGC intelligence detained him and placed him under house arrest; he was last seen at the funeral ceremony of former Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, according to the Times.