U.S. Officials Believed Israel Was Plotting to Kill Iranian Negotiators

Any Israeli attempt to kill Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, or Mohammad Ghalibaf, the Parliament speaker, would have derailed peace talks, American officials feared.

U.S. officials believed that Israel might have been plotting to kill Iran’s top negotiators while Washington was engaged with Tehran in delicate talks this spring to reach an interim peace deal, according to current and former American officials.

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 delicate cease-fire 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.

U.S. officials acknowledged that during the intense phase of the war, Mr. Araghchi and Mr. Ghalibaf, as senior government officials, could have been legitimate targets for Israel, which was intent on toppling Iran’s hard-line government. But after the negotiations started in earnest in April, American officials believed that any attempt to kill the Iranian leaders would end the talks and reignite the fighting.

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