Here’s the wild back story behind a failed plan to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran’s next leader.

© Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

The yearslong effort to groom the former Iranian president as an intelligence asset culminated in a dramatic effort to take him to a Mossad safe house in Iran in the early days of the war. But the plan fell apart.

© Todd Heisler/The New York Times

The yearslong effort to groom the former Iranian president as an intelligence asset culminated in a dramatic effort to take him to a Mossad safe house in Iran in the early days of the war. But the plan fell apart.

© Todd Heisler/The New York Times