Ahmadinejad denies #NewYorkTimes report on alleged Mossad contacts

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday dismissed a New York Times report claiming that Israel’s Mossad had tried to recruit him and that he is being held under house arrest, calling the allegations entirely untrue.

In a statement, his office accused the newspaper of running fabricated stories to mislead the public and stir internal divisions within Iran. It also rejected the house-arrest claim as an invention meant to prop up what it called the paper’s “absurd” narrative.

“We categorically reject all the completely false allegations promoted by The New York Times,” the statement said.

The Times reported Monday that Mossad had spent recent years trying to persuade Ahmadinejad to cooperate with Israel and had viewed him as a possible future leader of Iran.

Citing American and Iranian officials, it said the effort was part of a broader Israeli push for regime change that followed Israel’s opening strikes on senior Iranian figures.

According to the report, Israel secretly covered his housing and travel costs, and its operatives met him abroad several times, including in Budapest. The plan allegedly peaked in late February, in the first days of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, when Israeli intelligence tried to move him out of Tehran to install him in power.

The paper said a Feb. 28 airstrike hit his compound, damaging a building used by his guards and his armored car, after which a black Peugeot driven by Mossad operatives allegedly took him to a safe house inside Iran.

Ahmadinejad, who served as president from 2005 to 2013, appeared last week at the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — his first public appearance since the war.