US warned Iran about Israel’s aims to assassinate leaders
Trump officials were so worried Israel would assassinate key Iranian peace negotiators it took the extraordinary step of asking intermediaries to warn Iran.
Senior US officials feared that Israel intended to assassinate Iran’s top negotiators as the Trump administration pursued a high-stakes deal to end the war there and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, current and former officials familiar with the matter said.
Washington’s objection to killing Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the country’s parliamentary speaker, was so acute that this spring it took the extraordinary step of asking intermediaries to warn Iran about Israel’s assassination aims, the officials said.
“You kill those folks and you’re killing the pragmatists,” said a US official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the US outlook on Israel’s targeted killing campaign.
Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.As far back as March, when the Trump administration began to explore diplomatic options for ending the war, US officials told Israeli counterparts not to continue killing Iran’s political leadership, said a diplomat.
That US officials felt the need to take an additional step and warn Iran that its top negotiators could be killed demonstrates the strain in the US-Israel relationship and the Trump administration’s limited influence over the Israeli government, said analysts.
“It shows the divergence of war aims between the US and Israel and the fundamental determination on the part of Israel’s prime minister to undermine any negotiation that the US might conclude,” said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official who has advised Republican and Democratic administrations.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment.
When asked for comment from the White House, a US official said, “The President wants the peace process to play out.”
US concerns about Israeli assassinations were reported earlier by the New York Times.
When the United States and Israel started the Iran war on February 28, Israel assassinated scores of Iranian political and military leaders, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while the US military focused on degrading Iran’s navy and missile capabilities.
At first, the two allies shared the goal of regime change in Iran, but they quickly decoupled as US officials assessed that Tehran’s military and clerical establishment would maintain their grip on power.
More cracks emerged after Israel assassinated Iran’s top national security official, Ali Larijani, in mid-March, officials said.
“The turning point wasn’t the assassination of the supreme leader, it was the assassination of Larijani,” said a Western official.
“The US was looking for an Iranian official to deal with and all of a sudden he was gone.”
In recent months, Araghchi and Ghalibaf have been the key contacts for US officials in securing an initial ceasefire in April and then a framework agreement to end the war in June.
Even before that framework deal was reached, Israeli officials and powerful pro-Israel lobbyists in Washington began criticizing the agreement, which closes the door on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of regime change in Iran and paves the way for giving Iran economic sanctions relief in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
In March, President Donald Trump suggested publicly that Israel’s assassination campaign was complicating efforts to negotiate with the regime. “You know it’s a little tough,” he told reporters at the time. “They’ve wiped out everybody. I don’t want them to be killed.’’
Ghalibaf was among the senior Iranian officials present in a building struck by Israel in last year’s 12-day war, Middle Eastern media, citing Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency, has reported. The New York Times reported that Ghalibaf was nearly killed this year as well when Israel targeted a meeting of senior Iranian officials in an underground bunker.
The attempted killings of Ghalibaf, Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and other senior Iranian officials have raised concerns in the US and in the Middle East that the war may have installed a more ruthless regime with a score to settle in place of an elderly leader whose hold on power was believed to be slipping.
