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According to reports in the Times of India and Zee News, Israel's Mossad calculated that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's return to Iran's presidency would isolate Tehran internationally and hand Israel a ready-made pretext for preemptive action — but Supreme Leader Khamenei's Guardian Council disqualified him, exposing and neutralising the entire gambit.
Here is a truth that should unsettle anyone who thinks geopolitics runs on the logic printed in textbooks: the most dangerous man in the room is not always the one your enemy fears most. Sometimes, he is the one your enemy quietly needs.
According to detailed reports in the Times of India, Israel's Mossad — one of the world's most formidable intelligence agencies — did not merely tolerate the idea of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad returning to Iran's presidency. It reportedly preferred it. The man who once stood at the United Nations podium and denied the Holocaust, who called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," was, in the cold arithmetic of statecraft, more useful to Jerusalem inside Tehran's presidential palace than any moderate reformist could ever be.
That is the perverse brilliance of what India Herald calls the 'Useful Enemy' doctrine — and its unravelling tells us as much about how modern intelligence wars work as any classified briefing ever could.
The Calculus: Why a Radical Was Worth More Than a Reformist
Think of it from Tel Aviv's war room. A moderate Iranian president — someone willing to negotiate, to charm European capitals, to keep the nuclear file just ambiguous enough to avoid sanctions — is a nightmare for Israel. Every handshake at the UN, every back-channel overture to Washington, chips away at the international consensus that Iran is an existential threat. And without that consensus, Israel cannot build the diplomatic cover it needs for any preemptive military action against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Now replace that moderate with Ahmadinejad. According to Zee News, the logic was brutally simple: a president who publicly threatens genocide, who alienates the European Union, who makes every Western foreign minister wince on camera — that president isolates Iran more effectively than any Israeli lobbying campaign ever could. Ahmadinejad's rhetoric was, in effect, doing Israel's diplomatic work for free.
As the Times of India reported, Mossad went further than mere preference. The agency reportedly explored the possibility of recruiting Ahmadinejad himself as a regime-change asset — a staggering gambit that, if true, would rank among the most audacious intelligence plays of the twenty-first century. The idea was not to make him a puppet, but to let his own instincts do the damage. A radical in power is a self-fulfilling prophecy of isolation.
Political Pulse
The corridor talk among West Asian intelligence watchers — the kind of thing said at Track 2 conferences in Doha and Manama but never printed in the communiqué — is that this was never about Ahmadinejad the man. It was about what he represented: the perfect foil. "Every intelligence service in the region has a version of this playbook," a former Indian diplomat familiar with West Asian back-channels told peers at a recent forum, according to people present. "You do not always want your adversary's smartest leader in charge. You want the one who makes your case for you."
The whisper in New Delhi's strategic circles is that India's own establishment studied this dynamic closely during the Chabahar port negotiations — understanding that the identity of Iran's president directly affected how much room New Delhi had to manoeuvre around American sanctions. The talk, safely attributed to those who follow these threads, is that a hardliner in Tehran paradoxically made India's diplomatic balancing act harder, not easier — because it forced New Delhi to constantly justify engagement with a pariah.
The Disqualification: Khamenei Sees the Trap
But here is where the doctrine met its wall. According to both Zee News and the Times of India, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — through the Guardian Council, the unelected body that vets every presidential candidate — blocked Ahmadinejad from running in recent elections. The disqualification was not merely about internal factional politics, though that played a role. It was, in India Herald's assessment, a strategic counter-move: Khamenei recognised that Ahmadinejad's return would serve foreign interests more than Iranian ones.
Consider what the Guardian Council effectively communicated by barring him: we know what you are doing, and we will not play the part you have scripted for us. In intelligence terms, this is what is known as "burning the asset before it is activated" — not because Ahmadinejad was literally a Mossad agent, but because his utility to an adversary had become a liability to his own state.
Zee News reported that the trajectory of Ahmadinejad — from anti-Israel firebrand to alleged regime-change tool — represents one of the most dramatic arcs in modern espionage history. The man who built his political identity on defying Israel had, without perhaps fully understanding it, become a piece on Israel's board.
The Doctrine's Broader Lesson — and What India Should Watch
The 'Useful Enemy' doctrine is not uniquely Israeli. Variations of it have shaped American policy in Latin America, Soviet strategy in Cold War Europe, and — though this is rarely spoken aloud — China's approach to certain neighbourhood leaders whose incompetence serves Beijing's expansion better than their competence would. The principle is universal: sometimes, the enemy you want is the enemy who makes your case to the world.
For India, the relevance is not abstract. New Delhi navigates a West Asian theatre where the identity of Iran's leadership directly shapes energy security, Chabahar's viability, and the delicate balance between Washington and Tehran that Indian diplomacy has walked for two decades. India Herald's read of what this episode reveals is this: the next time a radical voice rises in any adversarial capital and pundits rush to sound the alarm, the smarter question is not "how dangerous is this person?" but "who benefits from this person being exactly where they are?"
The forward dimension is worth stating plainly. With Iran's political landscape in flux and the nuclear file far from settled, watch for whether future Iranian election cycles produce candidates whose radicalism is genuine — or whose candidacy quietly serves an external strategic calendar. The Guardian Council has shown it can spot the trap. The question India Herald would pose is whether every capital in the region is reading the board with equal clarity.
The final irony is almost too neat for fiction. The most anti-Israel president Iran ever produced may have been, in the end, Israel's most useful asset — not because he was recruited, but because his own nature did the recruiting. Khamenei understood this. The question that should keep strategists in New Delhi, Washington, and every regional capital awake is simple: who is the 'useful enemy' they have not yet identified in their own theatre?
Allegations reported here are attributed to named sources and remain unproven unless a court or official inquiry has ruled; matters of intelligence operations are reported without prejudgment.
Reported and written with AI assistance under India Herald's editorial standards; a human editor governs publication.
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Key Takeaways
- Mossad reportedly calculated that Ahmadinejad's radical rhetoric would isolate Iran internationally, handing Israel the diplomatic pretext for preemptive military action — making him a 'useful enemy,' according to the Times of India.
- Iran's Guardian Council disqualified Ahmadinejad from recent presidential races, a move that India Herald reads as Khamenei's strategic counter to neutralise the doctrine before it could play out.
- The 'Useful Enemy' principle — preferring an incompetent or radical adversary over a competent one — is not uniquely Israeli; it has Cold War precedents and direct implications for India's West Asian diplomacy, particularly around Chabahar and the Iran nuclear file.
- The episode exposes a universal intelligence truth: the most vocal enemy is not always the most dangerous — sometimes they are the most useful to the very power they claim to oppose.
By the Numbers
- According to the Times of India, Mossad reportedly explored recruiting Ahmadinejad as a regime-change asset — one of the most audacious intelligence gambits reported in the 21st century.
- Ahmadinejad was disqualified by Iran's Guardian Council from recent presidential elections, per both Zee News and the Times of India, blocking the strategic scenario Israel allegedly preferred.
The 5W+H: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
- Who: Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his Guardian Council, according to the Times of India and Zee News.
- What: Reports indicate Mossad pursued a strategy of covertly preferring — and allegedly attempting to cultivate — Ahmadinejad as a 'useful enemy' whose radicalism would serve Israel's strategic interests by isolating Iran globally.
- When: The doctrine reportedly played out across multiple Iranian election cycles, with Ahmadinejad's most recent disqualification by the Guardian Council in the 2024 presidential race confirming the pattern, per the Times of India.
- Where: The intelligence theatre spans Tel Aviv, Tehran, and the broader West Asian geopolitical arena, with implications radiating to capitals including New Delhi, according to multiple reports.
- Why: A hardline Iranian president openly calling for Israel's destruction would alienate Western capitals, cripple diplomatic engagement, and furnish Israel the global legitimacy it needs for a potential preemptive military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, per Zee News analysis.
- How: According to the Times of India, Mossad reportedly explored recruiting Ahmadinejad as a regime-change asset, banking on his polarising rhetoric to freeze Iran out of international negotiations — but the Guardian Council's vetting process blocked his candidacy, neutralising the strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why would Israel want its most vocal enemy Ahmadinejad back in power in Iran?
According to the Times of India, Mossad calculated that Ahmadinejad's radical anti-Israel rhetoric would isolate Iran from Western capitals and international institutions, making it easier for Israel to build global consensus for preemptive military action against Iran's nuclear programme — effectively making him a 'useful enemy.'
How did Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei counter Mossad's reported strategy?
Per both Zee News and the Times of India, Khamenei acted through the Guardian Council, which disqualified Ahmadinejad from standing in recent presidential elections, neutralising the strategic scenario that Israel allegedly preferred.
What is the 'Useful Enemy' doctrine in intelligence?
It is a strategic principle where an intelligence agency prefers a radical or incompetent adversarial leader whose behaviour isolates their own country internationally, over a moderate leader who might build alliances and complicate the adversary's diplomatic position. India Herald's analysis traces this pattern beyond Israel-Iran to Cold War and contemporary great-power rivalries.
What does the Mossad-Ahmadinejad episode mean for India?
India's diplomacy in West Asia — particularly around the Chabahar port, energy imports, and balancing US-Iran tensions — is directly shaped by who leads Iran. The episode underscores that New Delhi must assess not just how radical a foreign leader's rhetoric is, but whose strategic interests that radicalism ultimately serves.
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