{"id":189195,"date":"2026-07-03T15:44:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/189195\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T15:44:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T15:44:16","slug":"nyt-israel-plotted-to-kill-iran-peace-negotiators-to-derail-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/189195\/","title":{"rendered":"NYT: Israel plotted to kill Iran peace negotiators to derail talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump administration<\/a>\u00a0officials reportedly believed that the Israeli government intended to assassinate Iran\u2019s top negotiators\u2014including the country\u2019s foreign minister\u2014during peace talks with the US in an effort to sabotage diplomatic progress.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0Thursday that \u201cAmerican concerns about the targeting of two particular Iranian officials\u2014Abbas Araghchi, Iran\u2019s foreign minister, and\u00a0Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf<\/a>, the speaker of the Parliament\u2014spiked during delicate ceasefire negotiations that began in April.\u201d In response, the US \u201cwent so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials,\u201d according to the Times, which cited unnamed current and former American officials.<\/p>\n

The US and Israel have killed dozens of top Iranian officials since launching their illegal joint war in late February. But the allied countries\u00a0reportedly<\/a>\u00a0removed Araghchi and Ghalibaf from their target list in late March, opening the possibility of high-level negotiations to end the war.<\/p>\n

But Israel remained bent on targeting the negotiators, according to the Times, whose reporting was later corroborated by\u00a0The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Times detailed one dramatic incident in April, when Ghalibaf was planning to travel to Pakistan\u2019s capital to meet with US Vice President\u00a0JD Vance<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But on the way back to\u00a0Tehran<\/a>, an Israeli security threat emerged.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s 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\u2019s airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.<\/p>\n

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Mr. Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his\u00a0social media<\/a>\u00a0page. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The Post reported that \u201ccracks emerged\u201d between the US and Israeli approaches to the war following Israel\u2019s assassination of top Iranian national security official Ali Larijani in March.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve wiped out everybody,\u201d Trump told reporters in late March, suggesting Israel\u2019s assassination campaign was making it difficult to find potential negotiating partners.<\/p>\n

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote in response to the new reporting that \u201cIsrael is a state that, on paper, is a US partner, but in reality is so extreme in its obsession to undermine US diplomacy that it even tries to assassinate those the US engages with in crucial negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t recall a government as terrified of peace as the one running Israel,\u201d Parsi added.<\/p>\n

At present, the Israeli government \u2013 led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu \u2013 is endangering tenuous US-Iran peace talks with its continued occupation of and assault on\u00a0Lebanon<\/a>, which Iran has highlighted as a key factor in the negotiations.<\/p>\n

Visiting occupied southern Lebanon earlier this week, Netanyahu\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0to Israeli troops that \u201cour insistence is that we will not leave \u2026 until the threat is removed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parsi\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0earlier this week that \u201cbeyond his long-standing desire\u00a0to use American force to subjugate Iran to Israeli domination and achieve a regional balance favorable to Israel<\/a>,\u201d Netanyahu \u201cnow also has stark political and personal reasons to restart the war\u201d with Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe [US and Iran\u2019s\u00a0memorandum of understanding<\/a>] has come at a steep political cost for Netanyahu,\u201d wrote Parsi. \u201cHis prospects for reelection in October are weaker\u00a0than they have been in months<\/a>. 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\u2014undermining the very case he has made for his leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd of course,\u201d Parsi added, \u201cif he loses the elections, he will likely spend the next few years in jail, as he\u00a0will lose his immunity as prime minister and face trial over corruption charges<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

-Common Dreams<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump administration\u00a0officials reportedly believed that the Israeli government intended to assassinate Iran\u2019s top negotiators\u2014including the country\u2019s foreign minister\u2014during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[211,7603,34,246,214,56489,23434],"class_list":["post-189195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-abbas-araghchi","tag-block-2","tag-iran","tag-iran-war-2026","tag-israel-iran","tag-mohammad-bagher-glaibaf","tag-us-iran-peace-talks"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116856819699288245","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}