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US officials warned Iran that Israel might try to assassinate its top negotiators during ceasefire talks this spring, according to a New York Times report.
Getting into it: The Times, citing current and former US officials, reported that Washington feared Israel was plotting to kill Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf once negotiations intensified in April. They figured that taking out either man once talks were underway would’ve torpedoed any chance at diplomacy and dragged everyone back into the fighting. To head that off, the Trump administration leaned on other governments in the region to tip Tehran off that the two men were in Israel’s crosshairs.
Per the report, US officials found out Ghalibaf was sitting on one of Israel’s target lists and pressed Israel to take him off it. Iranian officials said Tehran worked Pakistani and Qatari go-betweens to lock down assurances from the US that its negotiators were off-limits.
The clearest scare came on April 12, when Ghalibaf was flying home from Islamabad after talks with Vice President JD Vance. Iranian security forces became aware that Israel was planning to take down his plane and that a pair of Israeli fighter jets had crossed into Iranian airspace out of Iraq. The plane made an emergency landing in Mashhad, and Ghalibaf and his delegation drove the rest of the way back to Tehran, an eight-hour trip.
It wasn’t the first time Ghalibaf came close. The Times reported he dodged death twice, once in the June 2025 war and again earlier this year, pulled from the rubble of struck buildings both times.
When the Times reached out, Israeli Embassy officials in Washington had nothing to say about the accusations. We contacted the embassy separately and have not heard back.
This all comes as Israel spent the opening stretch of the conflict wiping out a big chunk of Iran’s senior leadership, including national security chief Ali Larijani and former foreign minister Kamal Kharazi.
