President Donald Trump’s Iran war coalition accidentally blew up the anti-American hard-liner they had hoped would take over the country.
One of the opening Israeli strikes of the war killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, sparking a leadership vacuum in the Islamic Revolution, which the West hoped it could fill.
U.S. officials briefed on the matter told The New York Times that both Jerusalem and Washington wanted to replace Khamenei with former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was under house arrest in Tehran.
Ahmadinejad had been in on the plan, but the airstrike designed to free him from captivity left him injured, and the 69-year-old soon went cold on his role in the coup and has not been seen since.
He had previously accused the government of corruption, his aides had been arrested, and he had been barred from presidential elections.
The president from 2005 to 2013 had been placed under house arrest over his clashes with the Iranian regime.
But he was the enemy of my enemy choice and is no great ally of the West, having previously expressed a desire to “wipe Israel off the map.”
He had also been a proponent of cracking down on internal dissent and furthering Iran’s nuclear program.
Tens of thousands of Iranians are thought to have been killed by their government after authorities turned their weapons on protesters this year, becoming one of several pretexts for the Western strikes.
The nuclear program, meanwhile, is the single most talked-about justification for the war used by the White House.
Ahmadinejad was also no fan of the U.S., and the Times reports that some top D.C. government officials doubted whether putting him into power was a good idea.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told the newspaper that, “From the outset, President Trump was clear about his goals for Operation Epic Fury: Destroy Iran’s ballistic missiles, dismantle their production facilities, sink their navy, and weaken their proxy.
“The United States military met or exceeded all of its objectives, and now, our negotiators are working to make a deal that would end Iran’s nuclear capabilities for good.”
The Times notes that Trump had been keen to replicate the regime change effected in Venezuela, which saw dictator Nicolas Maduro abducted and taken to the U.S.
The new leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has pleased the White House with her ability to work with it, but Iran has not played out the same way.
Trump had hoped that they would, and U.S. officials had sought a pragmatic replacement for Khamenei, who they thought would work with Washington.
Instead, Iranian officials chose his son, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei, to replace his father after he died at the age of 86 after more than 36 years in power.
The regime change plot is at odds with much of the garbled messaging to come out of D.C. in the early days of the fighting, which centered on bringing an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
It is unclear how Ahmadinejad was brought into the plan, although the Daily Beast has contacted the White House for more information.
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