The story that the United States and Israel might have considered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a figure for a post-crisis Iran sounds almost like a political joke. A former president whose name is still associated by many with Holocaust denial, confrontational rhetoric, nuclear defiance, and an era of rigid ideological mobilization suddenly found himself at the center of discussions as a potential transitional manager following the weakening of the Islamic Republic.
At first, this version elicited laughter. Then, irritation. Then, a logical question followed: what if behind an outwardly absurd idea lay not foolishness, but a cold, cynical calculation?
According to reports from several media outlets, including some citing a New York Times report, the US and Israel allegedly viewed Ahmadinejad as a potential figure to govern Iran in the event that the regime's top tier collapsed. Following this same logic, a strike on the Narmak district in Tehran, where part of the infrastructure surrounding the former president was located, was interpreted not only as an assassination attempt but also as an effort to free him from the regime's control. This information remains politically sensitive and requires cautious phrasing: this is not a proven official plan, but a version supported by several publications and comments from officials on the condition of anonymity.
Yet, it is precisely this version that reveals the main point: external players have once again attempted to read Iran through ready-made templates rather than through the actual architecture of power, fear, money, networks, security corporations, and public exhaustion.
Ahmadinejad is Not a Savior. He is a Symptom of Someone Else's Mistake
Ahmadinejad ruled Iran from 2005 to 2013. His presidency coincided with a harsh phase of the nuclear standoff, a sanctions spiral, mass protests following the 2009 elections, and the strengthening of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' role in both the economy and politics. For reformers, he was a symbol of repression and ideological primitivism. For the West, he was a convenient caricature of a "dangerous Iran." For Israel, he was an almost perfect enemy.
However, after 2011, his relationship with the supreme leadership deteriorated sharply. A conflict surrounding Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, the influence of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, criticism of the excessive power of the clergy, and later calls for freer elections transformed Ahmadinejad from a favorite of the system into a toxic former ally. He was repeatedly barred from running in presidential elections, including the 2024 campaign, when the Guardian Council disqualified his candidacy once again.
Therefore, the superficial laughter is understandable: how can anyone propose a man for the role of a "new Iran" who, in the eyes of a significant part of society, is tied to the old Iran, to suppression, inflation, populism, and international isolation?
But that is where the nuance lies. If such an idea was indeed discussed, Ahmadinejad might have been viewed not as the leader of a new democratic republic, and not as an "Iranian de Gaulle." He could have been seen as a temporary bridge between the old power machine and a new, externally acceptable regime. Not as a revolutionary, but as an adapter. Not as an architect of the future, but as a man capable of telling part of the old apparatus: "You will not all be destroyed. The system will not vanish completely. Only the top leadership will change."
Why This Could Have Crossed Anyone's Mind in the First Place
To understand the logic behind the "Ahmadinejad option," one must discard moral judgments and look at Iran as a complex state corporation.
Iran is not just the clergy. It is not just the Revolutionary Guards. It is not just the president, parliament, or judiciary. It is a multi-layered system where security structures, religious foundations, parastatal holdings, shadow export networks, sanctions logistics, oil middlemen, currency arbitrageurs, municipal clans, provincial elites, veteran organizations, intelligence entities, and ideological foundations are deeply intertwined.
Striking the top of such a system does not automatically yield a manageable country. On the contrary, it could turn a nation of more than 90 million people into a fragmented territory with armed centers of power, a black market, a collapsed payment system, and a scramble for export channels. According to World Bank data, Iran's population in 2024 stood at about 91.6 million, while the UNFPA estimated the country's population in 2025 at approximately 92.4 million. This is not a small autocracy that can be "rebooted" with a single airstrike.
This is precisely why a transitional figure from within the old system could theoretically seem useful to external strategists. Such a figure could signal to the bureaucracy, the police, local administrations, parts of the business community, and mid-level security officials that capitulation does not mean personal catastrophe. This is not a scenario of total lustration, but rather a scenario of a managed reformatting.
The problem is that such constructs work under only one condition: if the external blow does not destroy the very fabric of the state.
The Iraqi Shadow Over Tehran
The main lesson of Iraq in 2003 was simple: if you destroy not only the dictator but also the state machine, the vacuum is quickly filled by armed networks, sectarian militias, a criminal economy, and external proxies. De-Baathification and the dissolution of the Iraqi army turned out to be a strategic suicide rather than a technical solution. They transformed a defeated regime into a scattered resistance.
In Iran, this risk is exponentially higher.
Iran possesses a more resilient bureaucratic tradition, a deeper historical statehood, a denser network of domestic security structures, and a far more developed sanctions economy. Even when weakened, it does not fall apart at the snap of a finger. The Iranian system knows how to live under pressure. Sanctions, inflation, currency shortages, strikes on infrastructure, protests, and isolation have not destroyed it automatically; instead, they have made it more closed, harsher, and more suspicious.
The World Bank estimated the contraction of Iran's GDP for the Iranian fiscal year ending March 20, 2026, at 2.7 percent. The IMF, in its April database, indicated a real GDP growth forecast for Iran in 2026 at minus 6.1 percent, with consumer price inflation around 68.9 percent. This is no longer just an economic crisis. This is a regime of macroeconomic exhaustion, where the foreign exchange market, the import of critical goods, energy logistics, and social payouts become elements of political security.
In such a situation, any external bet on a "fast transition" must take into account not the mood in émigré broadcasting studios, but the balance between the fear of the elites, the survival of the apparatus, and the price of betrayal within the system.
Iran's Economy: Not Ruins, But a Sanctions Organism
Western assessments often make one mistake: they perceive a sanctions-hit economy as one that is on the verge of collapse. Yet a sanctions economy can fail to grow, fail to modernize, grow poorer, and degrade, while still maintaining control.
The Iranian economy has become a system of forced adaptation. Official channels are narrowing, but parallel ones are expanding. Oil is sold at discounts. Payments pass through intermediaries. Imports are masked through third countries. Foreign exchange rent is distributed politically rather than through the market. The weakness of the private sector is compensated for by the strengthening of semi-state players.
In 2025, despite sanctions, independent trackers estimated Iranian oil exports to be roughly in the range of 1.5 to 1.6 million barrels per day in certain months. Energy Intelligence reported that for the first seven months of 2025, exports averaged about 1.63 million barrels per day, while Vortexa estimated July exports at around 1.5 million barrels per day.
This is not an economy of prosperity. But it is an economy capable of buying loyalty, financing the security apparatus, and maintaining minimal state cohesion.
Even Iran's military spending reflects this duality. According to SIPRI data, the country's military expenditures in 2025 decreased in real terms by 5.6 percent to 7.4 billion dollars, largely due to high inflation. In nominal terms, spending might have grown, but inflation ate away the real purchasing power of the budget.
This is an important detail. Iran is not a superpower in the classical financial sense. Its strength lies not in the size of its official military budget, but in its asymmetric structure: missiles, drones, proxy networks, intelligence, cyber resources, shadow shipping, regional allies, ideological mobilization, and the ability to raise the price of a crisis for the entire world.
Oil, Hormuz, and the Fear of the Global Price of Chaos
Any regime change scenario in Iran runs into energy. Iran is not just about domestic politics and a nuclear program. It is a state situated along the Strait of Hormuz, through which a critical portion of global oil and gas traffic passes.
Following the escalation of the war in 2026, energy markets became one of the main fronts. Reuters reported that India, amid supply disruptions through Hormuz, began more actively purchasing oil from Latin America and Africa, and also resumed imports of Iranian oil under a US waiver aimed at stabilizing global prices.
The IEA, in its April report, sharply revised its global oil demand forecast, stating that the war involving Iran had altered the global market picture. In May, IEA chief Fatih Birol warned that oil markets were approaching a "red zone" due to supply deficits and risks surrounding Hormuz.
This means that chaos in Iran does not remain an Iranian chaos. It translates into inflation in Europe, a political problem for the White House, an insurance shock for shipping, a threat to Asian refineries, additional pressure on developing economies, and a new risk premium in commodities markets.
This is precisely why the "Ahmadinejad option," however strange it might seem, could have been an attempt to solve not the Iranian problem, but the problem of manageability after a strike. Not democracy, not human rights, not an ideal transition, but control over the consequences.
The Nuclear Factor: Uranium as Political Currency
The nuclear program remains at the center of the crisis. According to IAEA assessments, prior to the Israeli-American attacks, Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent, which, with further enrichment, is potentially sufficient for about ten nuclear warheads under the agency's estimated methodology. Reuters wrote in February 2026 that the IAEA called inspector access "essential and urgent."
This makes any change of power not just a political operation, but a technological one. The question is not who will sit in the presidential chair. The question is who controls the uranium, the centrifuges, the archives, the physicists, the security of the facilities, the underground storage sites, and the chains of command.
Following the strikes and the ceasefire negotiations, the issue of enriched uranium became a central bargaining point. Reuters reported that the Iranian leadership insisted on keeping the highly enriched uranium inside the country, while US President Trump spoke publicly of his intention to achieve its removal or destruction.
In such an environment, Ahmadinejad as a "transitional figure" would look useful in only one case: if he is capable of ensuring the continuity of control over the nuclear infrastructure while simultaneously selling a formula to the outside world: "the war is over, the program has been brought under control, the state has been preserved."
But that is the theory. The practice is far harsher.
Why Ahmadinejad Could Not Become the New Shah
The primary weakness of this construct is obvious: Ahmadinejad lacks a viable organizational base.
He does not control the Revolutionary Guards. He does not control the Basij. He does not control the judiciary. He does not possess a major parliamentary faction of his own. He is not a unifying symbol for the opposition. He is unacceptable to liberal and reformist circles. He is not a natural leader for the diaspora. For a significant portion of society, he is not an alternative to the regime, but rather its former face.
This is precisely what experts on Iran have pointed out. Israeli analyst Raz Zimmt noted that it is difficult to comprehend how anyone could believe in the possibility of Ahmadinejad becoming the next ruler of Iran given his lack of actual organizational backing.
Therefore, if anyone truly viewed Ahmadinejad as an independent leader of a coup, it was strategic madness. It is the equivalent of attempting to replace a complex power vertical with a well-known face, yet without an army, without a party, without a financial bloc, and without control over security.
But if he was viewed as a temporary symbol of amnesty for a portion of the old apparatus, the logic becomes less absurd. In that case, his role would not be to seize power, but to convince others not to defend the old leadership to the bitter end.
Amnesty Versus Destruction: Two Regime Change Scenarios
In any authoritarian state, elites ask themselves one single question: what will happen to me after the fall of the regime?
If the answer is prison, confiscation, exile, or death, the elites fight until the end. If the answer is amnesty, the preservation of a portion of their property, a gradual transition, and limited accountability, a segment of the elites begins to bargain.
In Iran, this is particularly vital. The system is sustained not merely by faith. It is sustained by interests. Thousands of individuals are embedded in its economic chains: oil contracts, construction funds, currency permits, customs schemes, defense procurement, pharmaceutical imports, subsidies, and regional budget allocations.
A scenario involving the total destruction of the regime turns all of these people into suicide squads for the system. A scenario of partial amnesty makes them potential defectors.
This is precisely where Ahmadinejad could have mattered. He could have served not as the "new leader of Iran," but as the language through which the outside world attempted to speak to the old apparatus. His signal could have sounded like this: not everyone will be destroyed, not everyone will be put on trial, not everyone will lose their status, and a new configuration is possible without a total dismantling of the state.
Yet, such a scenario requires surgical actions, political coordination, pre-arranged channels with the elites, a clear security formula, and tight control over information.
If, instead, a massive campaign of destruction begins, the bet on a transitional figure burns out within the very first days.
The Strike on Narmak: When an Operation Kills Its Own Legend
If the strike on the Narmak district was indeed connected to an attempt to remove Ahmadinejad from the regime's control, its outcome proved to be politically self-defeating. Instead of the image of a liberated transitional leader, what emerged was the image of a man whom others were either trying to free, assassinate, utilize, or frame.
Reports of his death surfaced and were denied. Later, it was written that he had been wounded and subsequently vanished from the public eye.
For any politician in Iran, this is a deadly ambiguity. If the regime considers you a traitor, you are vulnerable. If the opposition considers you part of the old system, you are toxic. If external forces consider you a tool, you are expendable. If your contacts are reported by international media, you can no longer maneuver safely.
In this sense, the publication of the story itself may have caused Ahmadinejad greater harm than a missile.
Who Benefits From the Leak
The question of "who leaked it?" is less important here than the question of "who benefits?".
It benefits a faction of the regime. Now, any network associated with Ahmadinejad can be presented not as an internal opposition, but as a foreign asset. In a wartime environment, this is not a political accusation, but nearly a death sentence. The security logic is straightforward: if a former president was discussed as a figure for an external scenario, his inner circle becomes a target for a purge.
It benefits a faction of the radical émigré opposition. For them, Ahmadinejad is dangerous not because he is a democrat, but because he could offer a third way: neither the preservation of the Islamic Republic in its previous form nor the complete dismantling of the old apparatus. For those demanding the total liquidation of the system, such a transitional compromise represents a threat.
It also benefits those external players who wish to close the chapter on a managed transition. Following such a leak, Ahmadinejad ceases to be a viable channel. His name is burned. Any contact with him becomes toxic. Any public activity on his part will be interpreted as part of a foreign plot.
Therefore, the story of the "Ahmadinejad option" may not only be a narrative about a past plan. It may be the very tool used to eliminate that plan.
The Israeli Dilemma: Destroying the Threat Versus Creating a Vacuum
The Israeli logic is straightforward: a nuclear Iran is perceived as an existential threat. Following decades of a ballistic missile program, proxy networks, support for Hezbollah, attacks executed through regional structures, and direct military confrontation, Tel Aviv does not trust any declarations from Tehran.
Yet, military efficiency and political efficacy are two distinct matters. One can destroy facilities. One can eliminate commanders. One can damage missile infrastructure. One can disrupt elements of nuclear supply chains. But an airstrike cannot establish legitimate political authority in a country with a population of 90 million.
The INSS pointed out directly in May 2026 that the operation against Iran and its proxies had not yet concluded. This indicates that even the Israeli analytical community acknowledges this is not a brief raid, but a protracted strategic campaign with an open ending.
This is where the fundamental question arises: if the objective is not the occupation of Iran, the governance of Iran, or the long-term construction of a new regime, then who is to be held responsible for the morning after the strikes?
No answer is currently in sight.
The American Dilemma: Trump Demands Victory Without an Imperial Project
For US President Trump, the Iranian crisis represents a simultaneous foreign and domestic political test. He requires a demonstration of strength. He requires control over the nuclear threat. He requires a result that can be presented as a clear victory. However, he does not desire a new Iraq, a new occupation, or a new multi-year war.
This is precisely why Washington fluctuates between strikes, negotiations, demands regarding uranium, attempts to stabilize energy markets, and the search for a ceasefire formula. Reuters and other media outlets have reported on negotiations surrounding Hormuz, uranium, sanctions relief, and the parameters of a 60-day ceasefire.
Yet, this is the inherent vulnerability of the American strategy: one cannot systematically dismantle a system and simultaneously expect someone from within it to neatly arrange a capitulation.
If the United States does not wish to govern Iran after the war, it requires an internal transitional figure. If it distrusts every internal figure, it is left only with pressure. If pressure destroys the state, a vacuum emerges. If that vacuum extends to Hormuz, oil, and nuclear facilities, the ultimate price of victory becomes entirely unpredictable.
Why Iran Does Not Collapse as Its Adversaries Anticipate
Iranian society is exhausted. The economy is depleted. The youth are resentful. Women have emerged as one of the primary centers of social defiance. National minorities are dissatisfied. The religious legitimacy of the regime has weakened. Inflation is eroding wages. Currency instability is destroying any horizon for economic planning.
However, exhaustion with the regime does not equate to a readiness to accept an externally designed authority.
This is a critical miscalculation. The vast majority of Iranians can despise their own regime while simultaneously rejecting a foreign scenario. They can hold the clergy in contempt without desiring the disintegration of their country. They can dream of freedom while fearing a Syrian or Iraqi scenario. They can view the Revolutionary Guards as a profound problem while simultaneously perceiving them as the final structure preventing the state from sliding into utter chaos.
Consequently, an external project predicated on the concept of "removing the top tier so the country can realign itself" is nearly doomed in Iran. There is no unified opposition center, no recognized government-in-exile, no universal symbol of transition, no consensus-based economic program, and no pre-arranged pact linking the elites, the street, the ethnic regions, and the security apparatus.
Ahmadinejad did not resolve these issues. He merely highlighted them.
The True Meaning of the "Ahmadinejad Option"
The primary conclusion is not that Ahmadinejad could have become the ruler of Iran. In all likelihood, he could not.
The true conclusion lies elsewhere: the very idea of utilizing him demonstrates the desperation of external planning. When you lack a viable partner inside the country, you begin searching for anyone who is simultaneously known to the masses, hated by a faction of the regime, comprehensible to the old apparatus, and capable of uttering the words to end the war.
Ahmadinejad fit this construct only partially. He was recognizable. He possessed governance experience. He understood the state machinery. He was in conflict with the supreme leadership. He could speak the language of the impoverished classes and provincial populism. Yet, he was not a bridge to a new Iran. He was a fragment of the old Iran that external forces attempted to convert into a tool.
This is why the narrative appears simultaneously absurd and serious.
It is absurd because the idea of transforming a former anti-Western radical into the face of post-crisis stabilization looks grotesque.
It is serious because behind this grotesque facade lies a very real problem: the United States, Israel, and a significant portion of the external opposition lack a convincing model for governing Iran after a strike.
Conclusion: Ahmadinejad as a Mirror of Failure
The Ahmadinejad option is not a story about the strength of Ahmadinejad. It is a narrative about the weakness of external scenarios.
He was not an Iranian savior. He was not a new shah. He was not the leader of a democratic revolution. He was not a man capable of bringing the Revolutionary Guards, nuclear facilities, intelligence services, provinces, and the street under his command with a single address.
Instead, he served as an indicator that external players had, at least for a moment, reflected on the core issue: Iran cannot simply be bombed into a new political reality. It can only be transitioned from one power configuration to another through the elites, fear, amnesty, control over security structures, economic guarantees, and international bargaining.
If such a transition is not prepared, war produces not a new order, but a governance void.
A void in Iran is not an abstraction. It means uranium without transparent oversight. It means missiles without a unified political center. It means an energy shock. It means Hormuz. It means inflation extending far beyond the region. It means millions of individuals in a country where the state may be bad, cruel, and repressive, but its sudden collapse could prove immeasurably worse.
Therefore, the most critical question is not: "Could Ahmadinejad return?"
The correct question is: "Do those attacking Iran comprehend what happens the day after the regime is destroyed?"
Thus far, the answer appears alarming. Judging by the Ahmadinejad affair, they were not seeking a strategy. They were seeking a face. And a face detached from a structure of power is not a transitional leader. It is a poster on a wall that burns first when a real war begins.