In early 2024 Gergely Deli received an extraordinary request. A senior Hungarian government official asked the rector of Budapest’s Ludovika University of Public Service, known as NKE, to organize a climate conference and invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The former Iranian president, notorious for Holocaust denial and hostility towards Israel, would use the programme as cover for secret talks with Israeli intelligence, according to recent reporting by The New York Times.
Deli agreed despite recognizing the potential damage. ‘If these enemies want to talk with each other, then it’s best to do what you can to make them talk,’ he told the newspaper, saying he believed facilitating the contact might save lives.
The request placed a little-known legal scholar and academic leader inside a years-long Israeli effort to cultivate an improbable partner. The New York Times and Haaretz reported that the relationship developed after Ahmadinejad attended an environmental conference in Guatemala in 2023. Unnamed US officials told The New York Times that then-Mossad director David Barnea travelled to Budapest for the 2024 meeting, after which Mossad informed the CIA that contact had been established. Israel also reportedly financed some of Ahmadinejad’s travel and accommodation.
Israeli officials allegedly hoped Ahmadinejad could become useful, perhaps even a future leader, if Iran’s political system collapsed. That does not establish that he became a conventional Mossad agent, accepted Israel’s plans, or was controlled by it. His office has denied the allegations.
‘The request placed a little-known legal scholar and academic leader inside a years-long Israeli effort to cultivate an improbable partner’
On 7 and 8 May 2024, Ahmadinejad spoke at a closed NKE programme on environmental threats and ‘common values in the global environment’. It was not publicly advertised; Hungarian journalists learned about it through Iranian reports. The Israeli Embassy condemned the invitation, while Hungarian Jewish organizations criticized NKE. The university offered no substantive explanation. The Foreign Ministry said the government had not received Ahmadinejad and did not interfere in university programmes.
That account now appears incomplete. The latest reporting says that a senior government official initiated the invitation and told Deli that the conference was merely a pretext. Months before the Mossad story emerged, HVG reported that Ahmadinejad had attended a secret nighttime meeting, that government figures were aware of it, and that the details had been classified.
Deli declined to explain the invitation at the time. Responding to journalists’ questions, then-Minister heading the Prime Minister’s Office Gergely Gulyás said no member of the government had met Ahmadinejad. A week later, he said Deli had given him a ‘reassuring answer’, but refused to disclose it. ‘You should be reassured too,’ he suggested vaguely.
Despite the significant backlash over his first visit, Ahmadinejad returned to NKE in June 2025 for another climate-related event and exchanged gifts with Deli. The New York Times reported that he again met Israeli operatives and twice slipped away from his Iranian security detail.
Deli, 45, is a Roman-law scholar who became rector on 1 February 2022 after serving as dean of NKE’s Faculty of Public Governance and International Studies. His CV records work at the Justice Ministry and New York University, as well as more than a decade as an adviser to the Constitutional Court, including service on Tamás Sulyok’s team from 2014, who has served as the President of Hungary since 2024. Deli served as MCC’s deputy director between 2004 and 2009 and remains chairman of its supervisory board. Balázs Orbán, former political director to Viktor Orbán, chaired MCC’s board of trustees until June 2026.
The university that provided cover for the Mossad operation, NKE, is as important to the story as Deli himself. NKE is more directly integrated into the Hungarian state than a conventional university. It trains civil servants, diplomats, police officers, military personnel, and specialists in national security and disaster management, describing itself as a key centre for public administration, diplomacy, security, defence, and law enforcement.
It also jointly operates the Hungarian Diplomatic Academy with the Foreign Ministry, preparing future members of Hungary’s foreign service. A 2024 institutional document lists the ministry, represented by former foreign minister Péter Szijjártó, and NKE, represented by Deli, as the programme’s institutional partners.
Deli has frequently described universities as instruments of state relations. In September 2025, he said their task was to ‘build bridges between two states’. In April that year, NKE awarded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the title of Civis Universitatis Honoris Causa, with Deli praising his strategic vision and contribution to Hungarian–Israeli relations. Ahmadinejad returned roughly two months later.
‘The university that provided cover for the Mossad operation, NKE, is as important to the story as Deli himself’
Many questions remain about the Hungarian dimension of the operation, particularly the identity of the senior government official who instructed Deli to invite Ahmadinejad. Deli said he knew the invitation would provide cover for talks with Israeli intelligence and nevertheless agreed to organize it, suggesting that the instruction may have come from the highest levels of the state apparatus.
The operation itself reportedly unravelled after the US–Israeli air campaign began on 28 February. The New York Times wrote that a strike hit the section of Ahmadinejad’s Tehran compound used by his guards and destroyed his armoured vehicle, after which four Mossad operatives drove him to a safe house.
Ahmadinejad reportedly became alarmed by the chaotic extraction and disillusioned with the wider plan, leaving the property under unexplained circumstances. He disappeared from public view until attending Ali Khamenei’s funeral in July. Four senior Iranian officials told The New York Times that the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence arm had since taken him into custody after uncovering his Israeli contacts.
Iran has not officially confirmed an arrest, while Ahmadinejad’s office has denied both the Mossad allegations and reports that he is under house arrest.
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