US feared Israel was plotting to kill Iran negotiators during talks

US officials believed that Israel might have been plotting to kill Iran’s top negotiators while Washington was engaged with Tehran in talks this spring to reach an interim peace deal, The New York Times writes, citing current and former American officials.

As noted, killing senior Iranian leaders had been part of Israel’s strategy from the start of the war. But American concerns about the targeting of two particular Iranian officials — Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament — spiked during ceasefire negotiations that began in April.

Fearful that an Israeli assassination effort would doom the negotiations, the United States, according to some of the officials, went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials were killed at the outset of the US-Israeli war against Iran.