Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu clashed over striking Iran in a ‘dramatic’ overnight phone call, hours after a failed plot to topple Tehran’s regime in the war’s opening days was exposed.
The call was described as ‘lengthy and dramatic,’ according to Israel’s Channel 12.
The Israeli outlet notes that Netanyahu increasingly doubts further negotiations with Tehran will yield a peace deal and wants to resume military strikes.
Trump, meanwhile, wants to push harder for an agreement in which Iran abandons its nuclear weapons program before any return to war.
The discussion came hours after the New York Times revealed that Israel, with Trump’s approval, went into the war with an ‘audacious’ plan to install hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s new leader after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes.
The plot collapsed on day one when Ahmadinejad was wounded by an Israeli strike on his Tehran home meant to free him from house arrest, and he hasn’t been seen since.
Ahmadinejad, who had fallen out with the Ayatollah, was known during his 2005 to 2013 presidency for calling to ‘wipe Israel off the map.’ He also backed Tehran’s nuclear program, and violently crushed civilian dissent.
‘The failed plans for Ahmadinejad just further proves that there is no good leader within the current ranks of their government. There is no Delcy Rodriguez in Iran,’ a US official involved in the US-Iran negotiations told the Daily Mail.
The phone call between the two leaders occurred last night in a phone call that is described as ‘lengthy and dramatic’
An oil tanker burns after being hit by an Iranian strike in the ship-to-ship transfer zone at Khor al-Zubair port near Basra, Iraq, late Wednesday, March 11
The New York Times revealed that Israel, with Trump’s approval, went into the war with an ‘audacious’ plan to install hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s new leader after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed
A close associate of Ahmadinejad told the New York Times that the US wanted the former Iranian president to ‘play a very important role’ in the country’s leadership.
The US viewed him as a potential parallel to Delcy Rodriguez, who took power in Venezuela after US forces seized Nicolas Maduro and has since worked closely with the Trump administration.
Ahmadinejad believed that the strike was an attempt to free him, and that Washington viewed him as capable of leading Iran, according to the associate.
The strike on his property destroyed a security outpost near Ahmadinejad’s home. Days later news outlets reported that the former Iranian president had survived the bombing but that his ‘bodyguards’ were killed.
The bodyguards were, in fact, members of the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, tasked with protecting Ahmadinejad but also holding him under house arrest.
Following their deaths from the Israeli strike, Ahmadinejad became ‘disillusioned’ with the regime-change plan and cut off communication with western intelligence, according to the Times.
Israeli strikes on the war’s first day killed Ayatollah Khamenei at his Tehran compound and wiped out a meeting of senior Iranian officials.
Some of the officials killed in the Israeli strike had been identified by the White House as more willing to negotiate with the US than the current hardline regime.
Israeli strikes on the war’s first day killed Ayatollah Khamenei at his Tehran compound and wiped out a meeting of senior Iranian officials
Ahmadinejad believed that the strike was an attempt to free him, and that Washington viewed him as capable of leading Iran, according to the associate
It turns out the bodyguards were actually members of the regime’s Revolutionary Guard Corps who had been tasked with guarding Ahmadinejad but also holding him under house arrest
It remains unclear how exactly Israel and the US planned to install Ahmadinejad to power after freeing him from house arrest.
Trump claims the Iran war’s objectives are narrowly focused on eliminating Tehran’s nuclear capabilities, seizing its uranium enrichment stockpile, and dismantling the regime’s ballistic missiles.
But the revelation of the US-Israeli plan to install Ahmadinejad undercuts that line and suggests they had also hoped to put more pliable leadership in Tehran.
The New York Times previously reported that shortly prior to launching the war, Trump’s cabinet warned the President that killing Khamenei would not spark regime change.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the idea ‘farcical’ and Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed it as ‘bullshit.’
Netanyahu had assured Trump in a private February 11 briefing that the war could topple Tehran’s leadership, an assessment Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine later told the President Israel had ‘oversold.’
The current state of the war suggests the hardline Revolutionary Guard has tightened its grip on Iran as peace talks with the US remain stalled.
The Strait of Hormuz, which carries a one-fifth of the world’s oil, has been shut for months, driving up consumer and gas prices in the US.
