Days after Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader and other top officials in the opening salvos of the war, President Trump mused publicly that it would be best if “someone from within” Iran took over the country. It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president known for his hard-line, anti-Israel and anti-American views. But the audacious plan, developed by the Israelis and which Mr. Ahmadinejad had been consulted about, quickly went awry, according to the U.S. officials who were briefed on it.

Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan. He has not been seen publicly since then and his current whereabouts and condition are unknown.

To say that Mr. Ahmadinejad was an unusual choice would be a vast understatement. While he had increasingly clashed with the regime’s leaders and had been placed under close watch by the Iranian authorities, he was known during his term as president, from 2005 to 2013, for his calls to “wipe Israel off the map.” He was a strong supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, a fierce critic of the United States and known for violently cracking down on internal dissent. How Mr. Ahmadinejad was recruited to take part remains unknown.

The existence of the effort, which has not been previously reported, was part of a multistage plan developed by Israel to topple Iran’s theocratic government. It underscores how Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel went into the war not only misjudging how quickly they could achieve their objectives but also gambling to some degree on a risky plan for leadership change in Iran that even some of Mr. Trump’s aides found implausible. Some American officials were skeptical in particular about the viability of putting Mr. Ahmadinejad back into power.

…U.S officials spoke during the early days of the war about plans developed with Israel to identify a pragmatist who could take over the country. Officials insisted that there was intelligence that some within the Iranian regime would be willing to work with the United States, even if those people couldn’t be described as “moderates.” Mr. Trump was enjoying the success of the raid by U.S. forces to capture Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and the willingness of his interim replacement to work with the White House — a model that Mr. Trump appeared to think could be replicated elsewhere.

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One lesson of the Democratic Senate primary in Maine is that no one should underestimate the white-hot fury of the party’s voters.

In October, Graham Platner’s insurgent campaign appeared doomed. Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, had just entered the Senate primary race, reportedly at the urging of Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader. Then a barrage of devastating opposition research against Platner dropped. Journalists reported on old Reddit posts where he wrote that all cops are bastards, spoke about fighting fascism with guns and seemed to blame rape victims for their own assaults. His political director resigned. Hoping to get ahead of an even more damaging story, Platner revealed that a skull tattoo he’d gotten while he was in the Marines, when he was drunk with his friends on leave in Croatia, looked like a Nazi Totenkopf symbol. His public image abruptly transformed from working-class hero to guy with a Nazi tattoo. Many declared his candidacy dead.

But Maine Democrats, many of whom saw Platner in person as he tirelessly barnstormed across the state, seemed ready to look past the negative stories. On Thursday, Mike Hurley, the former mayor of Belfast, Maine, told me he “loves” Mills, but had been backing Platner because he wanted a brawler. While Republicans are playing “hardball,” he said, Democrats in Washington seem like they’re playing “T-ball.” Hurley was impressed, he said, by how Platner soldiered on after his disastrous October: “A lot of people would crumble under the kind of pressure he’s been under, and he’s not crumbling.” He felt as though he understood him. “Platner is a very recognizable kind of person in small towns,” said Hurley. “He’s a thoughtful loudmouth.”

…Plenty of Democrats, particularly outside of Maine, worry about Platner’s electability. Primary voters were poised to forgive his tattoo and his hotheaded Reddit posts, but a general electorate might not be so understanding. And while Platner is leading Collins in the polls, Collins has beat expectations before. In 2020, most polls showed her trailing the Democrat Sara Gideon, who outspent Collins by millions, but Collins ended up winning by nine points.

For many Maine progressives, though, Gideon’s defeat only emphasizes the peril of playing it safe. “The Sara Gideon campaign was a disaster, I think, because they made her follow a script, and she came off as totally fake because of it,” said Andy O’Brien, a former Maine legislator who now works at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. By “they,” he means Democrats from Washington. Now, he said, Maine voters have lost all faith in the ability of the party’s establishment to pick winners. “They sold us these candidates like Hillary Clinton and Kamala as the most electable candidates, and they weren’t,” he said.

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