Ace brings us the deets of an extremely intriguing, if unexpected and wildly improbable, tale.

A rector from the University of Budapest sent an invitation to Ahmadinejad to attend a “climate change” conference. His hope was to get him close to Israeli delegates so that they could talk and maybe eventually broker a peace treaty.

The yearslong effort to groom the former Iranian president as an intelligence asset culminated in a dramatic effort to take him to an Israeli safe house in the early days of the war. But the plan fell apart.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s 2024 visit to the university and a second one the following year were part of a yearslong Israeli effort to groom him as an intelligence asset who, when the time came, could be installed as Iran’s new leader, according to both American and Iranian officials familiar with the operation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence.

Recruiting Mr. Ahmadinejad was of such priority for Israel that the country’s then-spy chief David Barnea even traveled to the Hungarian capital in 2024 to meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad personally, according to former American officials. Soon afterward, they said, Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, notified the C.I.A. that it had been in contact with Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Israel’s decision to build a regime-change plan around Mr. Ahmadinejad is an extraordinary twist in the saga of the country’s relations with the former president, who was known for accelerating Iran’s nuclear program, calling regularly for the destruction of Israel and denying the Holocaust.

In recent years, according to American officials, Israel secretly paid money to Mr. Ahmadinejad for housing and travel, and Israeli operatives met him abroad on several occasions, including during his trips to Budapest.

The effort culminated in late February of this year — during the first days of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — with an audacious operation to relocate the former leader, who had been living under strict surveillance in Tehran. The goal: to set in motion the plan to topple the current regime and install Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The plan failed.

On Feb. 28, an Israeli airstrike hit Mr. Ahmadinejad’s compound, targeting the building of his bodyguards and his armored vehicle. After the strike, according to four senior Iranian officials, a black Peugeot car arrived, picked up Mr. Ahmadinejad and whisked him away at high speed from the chaotic scene.

American and Iranian officials with knowledge of the operation said the car had been driven by Mossad operatives, who took Mr. Ahmadinejad to a secret safe house in Iran.

But the former Iranian leader was upset about the frantic rescue operation, and he appeared to be disillusioned about the Israeli plan to return him to power, according to people with knowledge of what occurred.

He eventually left the safe house under circumstances that are still unclear. Mr. Ahmadinejad was not seen in public again until last Monday, when he made a brief appearance at the funeral procession for the slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

His current status remains uncertain. But four senior Iranian officials said that Mr. Ahmadinejad was in the custody of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence wing, under house arrest now that Iran has learned about much of his interactions with Israel.

A key part of the plan was that Kurdish Iranians would march on Tehran.

But, as Trump lamented months ago, that never happened. That was supposed to be the ground element which is absolutely essential in actually winning a war.

The story continues from there, and it’s all fascinating stuff.