Flipping a radical with a Radical

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to Pamphlet Global.

[00:00:01]Now, an explosive New York Times story has put out a theater of absurdity of what United States and Israel were basically trying to achieve in Iran with the decapitation of the current regime there. And you know, the biggest irony of the Iran war out being the open with that report because for years the United States and Israel justified their hostility towards Iran by portraying Tehran's leadership as radical, dangerous, and extremist. But now reports suggest that after Israeli strikes killed supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Washington and Tel Aviv were actually quietly exploring replacing him with none other than the former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was one of the most hardline and open anti-Israeli figures in Iran has ever produced. The same man they wanted to replace him with. The same Ahmadinejad who basically went ahead and denied the Holocaust. He accelerated Iran's nuclear program and repeatedly called for Israel to disappear from the map. That alone exposes the deeper contradiction behind the entire regime change narrative. So basically this was never fundamentally about democracy, moderation, or about liberal values in Iran. It was about control, strategic compliance, and installing a leadership that in Tehran that Washington and Israel believed that they could manage. As per the report, the Israeli planners allegedly even carried out a airstrike on Ahmadinejad's residence to free him from house arrest after the opening attacks that killed Khamenei and other senior official leaders. Now, think about that absurdity for that moment because this war was publicly sold as a campaign against Iranian extremism allegedly including a covert plan to elevate one of the most notorious hardliners in modern [clears throat] Iranian politics. And that reveals the real logic of this regime change politics in West Asia.

[00:01:53]This issue [laughter] is often not whether a leader is radical or authoritarian. The issue is whether the leader is strategically useful. Now, Ahmadinejad basically survived that strike, but reportedly became so disillusioned with the operation after narrowly escaping literal death. Since then, his whereabouts remain unclear.

[00:02:11]Nobody knows where he is. What this episode ultimately exposes is the extraordinary hubris behind modern regime change operations that US and Israel tried to take. And in this process, they reportedly gambled on a man who built his own political legacy on anti-Americanism, anti-Israel rhetoric, and nuclear confrontation.

[00:02:33]That contradiction in itself says everything.