US officials attempted to warn Iran of fears that Israel would assassinate mediators
U.S. officials tried to warn Iran about fears that Israel would assassinate meditators during talks this spring, two U.S. officials said.
Officials say US is concerned Israel could assassinate Muhammad Bagher GalibafLeading the negotiations with the United States is Iran’s parliamentary speaker, or Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is also the public face of the talks. Authorities said the warnings were delivered through intermediaries.
New York Times first reported on warnings.
There was no indication Friday that U.S. intelligence had knowledge of the specific plot that led to the alert. A senior Israeli defense official has publicly acknowledged Jerusalem’s desire to kill senior Iranian leaders, and President Donald Trump has made clear in the past that those efforts are complicating negotiations.
He refused to tell reporters in March who the United States was negotiating with in Iran because “I don’t want them killed.”
“You know, this is kind of hard,” he said. “They destroyed everyone.”
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sometimes intense disagreements At a time when Netanyahu is frustrated with ongoing negotiations over war with Iran and Trump believes his Israeli counterpart is too eager to upset a nascent peace.
In one particularly heated exchange in June, Trump used profanities to express his disapproval of Israel’s planned military operation in Lebanon, according to two people familiar with the conversation. Trump officials are also closely monitoring Israel’s espionage network, which has increased its intelligence and spied on Iranian and U.S. officials in recent months, a U.S. official said.
In the early days of the war, Israel assassinated several senior political and religious leaders in the country, including the country’s religious leader and, perhaps more importantly for potential negotiations, top national security official Ali Larijani.
But as it became clear that the campaign had not successfully ushered in a new regime in Tehran, the Trump administration appears to have backed away from supporting this strategy in favor of negotiations with Iran.
Targeting Ghalibaf or Araghchi could upset very tenuous talks whose future is even now uncertain.
USA and Iran signing a memorandum of understanding The agreement, which calls for a 60-day ceasefire, leaves the most complicated issues, such as the fate of Iran’s nuclear stockpile, to later negotiations. Even with the 60-day agreement in place, Iran opened fire on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the United States retaliated with strikes on Iranian targets.
CNN’s Oren Liebermann contributed to this report.
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