US officials were gripped by fears that Israel was plotting to assassinate Iran‘s top negotiators during highly sensitive, secret peace talks with the administration earlier this spring.
The bombshell report by the New York Times details how American officials were alarmed by Israel’s plan to potentially take out the very men holding the keys to peace negotiations. Eliminating top Iranian commanders had been a cornerstone of Israel’s war strategy from day one, but American panic reached a fever pitch during the delicate negotiations that began in April.
Concerns spiked dramatically over the potential targeting of two specific figures: Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the parliament. In response, the US asked other countries in the area to warn Iran that Israel may have a plan brewing to take out Iran’s main negotiators.
US officials knew that Araghchi and Ghalibaf were viewed as main targets by Israel, which remained fiercely intent on regime change inside the country. The conflict erupted on February 28 following a devastating Israeli airstrike that wiped out Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, alongside a cohort of the regime’s most senior elite. The decapitation strike was executed with the help of American intelligence. As the war unfolded, a sharp divide in strategy emerged between the allies.
While the American military focused its firepower on crippling Iran’s naval assets and missile launch capabilities, Israel adopted a far more aggressive, personalized approach.
In those chaotic early weeks, the Israelis made hunting down and liquidating Tehran’s political and military high command their priority, determined to wipe out as many regime kingpins as possible.
Beyond setting their sights on Araghchi and Ghalibaf, Israel had already killed other Iranian leaders during the strikes that were viewed as more moderate, including Iran’s former foreign minister Kamal Kharazi and their national security leader Ali Larijani.
Araghchi and Ghalibaf have served as Iran’s primary point men in frantic negotiations with various regional powers to secure a ceasefire and, ultimately, a more permanent peace deal with the United States.
Against all odds, those efforts yielded a massive breakthrough in June, when Washington and Tehran successfully hashed out a framework agreement. The deal aimed to immediately reopen the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz and laid down the crucial ground rules for follow-on negotiations regarding Iran’s controversial nuclear program.
When the two-week ceasefire was brokered in April, Israel viewed the entire agreement as an unmitigated disaster.
From Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s perspective, the deal failed to achieve any of their core war aims: the fundamental collapse of Iran’s theocratic regime, the total destruction of its proxy networks and the dismantling of its missile arsenal.
Instead of being toppled, Tehran’s hardline government emerged even more fiercely authoritarian, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps tightening its iron grip over the entire nation.
While Israeli officials offered only grudging diplomatic support for the truce, the country was flooded with anxiety that the United States was cutting the war short.
Worse still, they feared the agreement would flood Iran with billions of dollars in sanctions relief, effectively bankrolling a rapid post-war reconstruction while leaving Tehran’s nuclear ambitions completely unchecked.