Two top Iranian negotiators were reportedly removed from the U.S.-Israeli target list, but Israel remained bent on assassinating them, according to The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in 2024 during confirmations of President Masoud Pezeshkian’s cabinet..(Mehr News Agency/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)
By Jake Johnson
Common Dreams
Trump administration officials reportedly believed that the Israeli government intended to assassinate Iran’s top negotiators — including the country’s foreign minister — during peace talks with the U.S., in an effort to sabotage diplomacy.
The New York Times reported Thursday that
“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 delicate ceasefire negotiations that began in April.”
Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iran’s Parliament speaker, in December 2025. (Mehr News Agency/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
In response, the U.S. “went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials,” according to the Times, which cited unnamed current and former American officials.
The U.S. and Israel have killed dozens of top Iranian officials since launching their illegal joint war in late February.
But the allied countries reportedly removed Araghchi and Ghalibaf from their target list in late March, opening the possibility of high-level negotiations to end the war.
But Israel remained bent on targeting the negotiators, according to the Times, whose reporting was later corroborated by The Washington Post.
The Times detailed one dramatic incident in April, when Ghalibaf was planning to travel to Pakistan’s capital to meet with U.S. Vice President JD Vance:
“Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.
But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.
Iran’s security forces notified the plane carrying Mr. Ghalibaf back to Tehran that they had picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.
Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Mr. Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his social media page. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, and the Iranian delegation traveled some eight hours by land back to Tehran, Mr. Mohammadi and the two officials said.”
The Post reported that “cracks emerged” between the U.S. and Israeli approaches to the war following Israel’s assassination of top Iranian national security official Ali Larijani in March.
“They’ve wiped out everybody,” Trump told reporters in late March, suggesting Israel’s assassination campaign was making it difficult to find potential negotiating partners.
Trump signing the memorandum of understanding with Iran at the Palace of Versailles on June 17 as U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on. (White House /Daniel Torok)
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to the new reporting that
“Israel is a state that, on paper, is a U.S. partner, but in reality is so extreme in its obsession to undermine U.S. diplomacy that it even tries to assassinate those the U.S. engages with in crucial negotiations.”
“I can’t recall a government as terrified of peace as the one running Israel,” Parsi added.
At present, the Israeli government — led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu— is endangering tenuous U.S.-Iran peace talks with its continued occupation of and assault on Lebanon, which Iran has highlighted as a key factor in the negotiations.
Visiting occupied southern Lebanon earlier this week, Netanyahu declared to Israeli troops that “our insistence is that we will not leave… until the threat is removed.”
Trump, or right, on Dec. 29, 2025, receives news at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, that Netanyahu, facing him across the table, will award him the Israel Prize, (White House /Daniel Torok)
Parsi wrote earlier this week that “beyond his long-standing desire to use American force to subjugate Iran to Israeli domination and achieve a regional balance favorable to Israel,” Netanyahu “now also has stark political and personal reasons to restart the war” with Iran.
“The [U.S. and Iran’s memorandum of understanding] has come at a steep political cost for Netanyahu,” wrote Parsi.
“His prospects for reelection in October are weaker than they have been in months. Once seen as the Israeli leader uniquely capable of delivering President Trump, he now confronts the prospect that both the war and the ensuing diplomacy will leave Israel in a strategically weaker position—undermining the very case he has made for his leadership.”
“And of course,” Parsi added, “if he loses the elections, he will likely spend the next few years in jail, as he will lose his immunity as prime minister and face trial over corruption charges.”
Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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