Four senior Iranian officials reportedly told The New York Times who have now published this highly doubtful report that former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been arrested and placed under house arrest by the IRGC Intelligence Organization after the regime uncovered his alleged connection to Israel.

The reported arrest was said to be linked to an earlier Israeli-American effort to recruit Ahmadinejad as a possible leader of Iran following the collapse of the Islamic Republic. According to The New York Times, Israel had developed a high-risk plan at the beginning of the war to free Ahmadinejad from house arrest and position him as an alternative national leader.

As part of that operation, Israel reportedly struck a security facility near Ahmadinejad’s Tehran residence. The attack was intended to help him escape the regime’s control, and Ahmadinejad later acknowledged that he understood the strike had been carried out to free him.