Those of us who have been around for awhile remember when Ahmadinejad was, for awhile, the Big Bad of the discourse, when there was big push to go to Iran before it was too late (before Bush was out of office).
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.
He was president when Netanyahu did the cartoon bomb.
People are good or bad independent of The Discourse, of course, but whether someone is the chosen Big Bad for the moment has little to do with how they are relative to our many bad pals. And they can all be redeemed when desired.