Turkish President Erdogan reportedly responsible for President Trump’s decision to scrap planned regime change in Iran involving Kurdish operation.By World Israel News StaffFormer Israeli military intelligence chief Tamir Hayman said a reported US-Israeli plan to help replace Iran’s leadership with former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad depended on a Kurdish operation that was later canceled after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan objected to President Donald Trump.Hayman, a retired major general who previously led the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate and now heads the Institute for National Security Studies, made the comments in an interview with PBS’s “Firing Line.”His remarks offered rare public confirmation from a former senior Israeli intelligence official of reports that Ahmadinejad, the hardline former Iranian president once known for his anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric, had been considered as part of a broader regime-change effort during the war with Iran.“As for Ahmadinejad, there was a sequence of special operations, very, very unique, that was supposed to happen,” Hayman said. “And Ahmadinejad was a part of that sequence.”“The rest of the operations are not fully disclosed to the public, except for the Kurdish invasion,” he added.Hayman said the plan failed because the Kurdish operation was meant to be the opening move.“Because the centerpiece of all the sequence should have been started with the Kurdish invasion,” he said.Asked why the Kurds did not move, Hayman pointed to Erdogan’s intervention with Trump.“According to what was published, Erdogan, who really considered the Kurdish as a strategic threat to the stability of Turkey, convinced Trump that it’s a bad idea to give the Kurdish a state,” Hayman said.“And giving a Kurdish, backing the Kurdish by United States goes against the interest of Turkey,” he added. “And I think that had something to do with the decision of Trump to cancel this operation.”Asked whether Trump canceled the operation, Hayman replied: “Definitely.”The New York Times previously reported that the United States and Israel had considered Ahmadinejad as a possible post-regime leader after the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.The reported plan drew widespread attention because Ahmadinejad, who served as president from 2005 to 2013, was long associated with Holocaust denial, support for Iran’s nuclear program and repeated calls for Israel’s destruction.Ahmadinejad had been under close watch by Iranian authorities after falling out with the regime.An Israeli strike on his Tehran home at the start of the war was reportedly intended not to kill him but to free him from house arrest.He survived, was injured and later became disillusioned with the plan, the reports said.Analysts noted that although he had broken with parts of Iran’s ruling establishment, he remained deeply unpopular with many reformists and had no clear organizational base capable of taking power.Hayman framed the Ahmadinejad plan as part of a broader misreading of Iran after the US success in Venezuela, where Trump had helped remove Nicolas Maduro and install Delcy Rodriguez.“Let’s start with Venezuela because that is really what’s behind the sense of confidence that maybe arrogance,” Hayman said.He said Trump’s confidence after Venezuela appeared to drive his willingness to move against Iran.“We know that there’s a kind of a concept that Israel drove, was kind of convinced Trump to strike. That’s not accurate,” Hayman said. “When Trump said help is on the way and decided to strike Iran, surprised Israel on early January.”Hayman said Israel had not been planning an operation against Iran at that point.“Nothing was planned in January by the Israelis,” he said. “Trump, out of nowhere, surprised Israelis and said that he’s going to strike Iran.”“That led to the Israeli planning and the American motivation in the 28th of February,” he added.Hayman said the early success of strikes against Iran’s top leadership may have fed unrealistic expectations that the regime would collapse.“I think hope covered rational thinking,” he said. “Hope is not strategic plan.”He said he never believed Iran’s regime could be toppled by air power alone.“I didn’t believe that we can topple a regime through aerial campaign,” Hayman said. “Most professionals would state that that’s impossible to achieve.”Hayman argued that military action could damage Iran’s nuclear program, but said the campaign had not achieved its central goals. He said Iran’s regime survived under the leadership of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late supreme leader, while key elements of the nuclear program remained intact.He also criticized Trump’s decision to halt the war and pursue negotiations before Israel and the US had completed their military objectives.“On the brink of execution, President Trump stopped the war and believed that he can get the same results of a destruction of the, or obliteration of all the nuclear projects through negotiations,” Hayman said.The post Erdogan lobbied Trump to nix Iran regime change plan, says former intel chief appeared first on World Israel News.