Before Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf flew to Islamabad in April for talks with Vice President JD Vance, Iranian officials asked for a guarantee. Through Pakistani and Qatari intermediaries, they wanted assurances that Israel would not go after members of the delegation. The request says a lot about how U.S. officials were thinking at the time.
Those officials feared that Israel might try to kill Ghalibaf, who is Iran’s parliament speaker, or Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi while the two men were negotiating an interim peace deal with Washington, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing current and former American officials. Both had central roles in contacts aimed at a ceasefire and then a wider arrangement with the United States.
Why Washington worried
Killing senior Iranian leaders was part of Israel’s war strategy from the start. The war began on February 28 with an Israeli strike, based in part on U.S. intelligence, that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior officials. U.S. strikes went mostly after Iran’s navy and missile forces, while Israel concentrated early on Iranian leaders.
The Times reported that American unease grew once serious negotiations opened in April. U.S. officials acknowledged that at the height of the fighting, both men could have been seen as legitimate targets. After the talks began, though, they believed an attempt on either would likely end the diplomacy and bring back the fighting.
Washington was worried enough to ask countries in the region to warn Iran that the two could be targeted.
Israel had already killed Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security official, and Kamal Kharazi, a former foreign minister, the paper said. The Trump administration had hoped both might be useful in negotiations, and both were in contact with the United States when Israeli airstrikes killed them.
The Wall Street Journal reported in March that Israel had put Araghchi and Ghalibaf on a target list and then temporarily taken them off as the United States explored talks. A U.S. official and a Middle Eastern official told the Times that the administration later learned at least Ghalibaf was on an Israeli list, and asked Israel not to target him. Ghalibaf had survived earlier attempts, the report said. He was nearly killed in the 12-day war of June 2025 and again this year, when Israel hit a secret meeting of senior Iranian officials in a bunker under a mountain. In both cases, Iranian officials said he was pulled from the rubble.
The flight home from Islamabad
Pakistani fighter jets escorted the aircraft carrying more than 70 members of the Iranian delegation from the border to Islamabad and back. On the return leg, Iranian security forces warned the plane carrying Ghalibaf that, according to their intelligence, Israel planned to attack it. They said two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iranian airspace from the west, near Iraq.
Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Ghalibaf who was on the trip, confirmed the account on social media. The plane landed in Mashhad instead, and the delegation spent about eight hours on the road back to Tehran.
The talks went on. In late May Ghalibaf and Araghchi flew to Qatar, and in June they went to Switzerland for another in-person meeting with Vance and the American delegation.
Diverging aims
The report describes Washington and Jerusalem drifting apart as the war went on. Israel gave only grudging support to the two-week ceasefire reached in April, according to the Times, and many Israelis feared Washington was moving too fast to end the fighting. In June, the United States and Iran agreed a framework aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz and setting terms for further talks on Iran’s nuclear program. Israeli officials and commentators called it a failure, because it did not deliver regime change, destroy Iran’s proxy network or seriously damage its missile program. Some Israeli officials also feared it could release billions of dollars to Tehran with too few limits on its nuclear ambitions.
The Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment to the Times. A U.S. official told the newspaper that talks between the American and Iranian delegations were continuing and that President Donald Trump wanted the peace process “to play out.”
Trump told CNBC on Thursday that Iran has agreed to “just about everything we need,” while saying the United States stands ready to respond militarily if Tehran again threatens regional security or international shipping. Iranian officials this week kept rejecting international demands to restore U.N. nuclear inspections and insisted Tehran would retain control over navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, despite U.S. opposition. They also warned the United States and Israel against renewed military action ahead of funeral ceremonies for Khamenei, due to begin this weekend.
Sources
- Report: U.S. Feared Israel Might Target Iran’s Negotiators During Peace Talks
- Report: US feared Israel would kill Iran negotiators during peace talks
