Add The New York Post on Google The US believed Israel was plotting to kill Iran’s head negotiators in the middle of the peace talks, with America going as far as to warn Tehran through third party countries of the risks, officials said.
Fears that Israel could derail the fledgling peace talks spiked in April as America believed the Jewish state had their eyes on Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, The New York Times reported.
The two leaders would go on to approve the current peace deal with the US. If they were killed, it would have likely prolonged the conflict as previous assassinations by Israel have.
Araghchi and Ghalibaf were known to have been on a so-called “kill list” back in March, which was composed of top regime officials who Israel sought to remove.
The two leaders, however, were removed from the list following intervention from the US as the negotiations began to take form, Reuters reported.
American-Iranian negotiations had previously been halted with an Israeli strike that killed Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security official who had been leading the negotiations in March.
Despite the clear orders to keep Araghchi and Ghalibaf alive, American officials still held concerns that Israel would still try to assassinate them, pushing the US to ask countries in the Middle East to warn Iran about the possibility of an attack, sources told the Times.
The fears appeared all the more real during Ghalibaf’s trip to Pakistan to meet with Vice President JD Vance in April.
While Iran sought guarantees from the US that their delegation would be safe during the trip, an Israeli security threat emerged on Ghalibaf’s flight back from Islamabad, the Times reported.
During the flight, Iran’s security forces notified the plane about an alleged Israeli plan to attack the aircraft, with two Israeli fighter jets detected entering the Islamic republic’s airspace, two officials told the outlet.
The account echoes the claims from Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Ghalibaf, who said the plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to Pakistan.
The delegation was forced to take an eight hour trip by land to Tehran due to the security concerns, Mohammadi said.
Ghalibaf would go on to travel with Araghchi to Qatar and then to Switzerland last month for another in-person meeting with Vance and American negotiators.
