US warned Iran about possible assassination of mediators by Israel

US officials have tried to warn Iran about fears that Israel could assassinate mediators during negotiations in recent months, two US officials said.

The officials said the US feared that Israel might assassinate Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament who is leading negotiations with the US, or Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who has also been one of the main public figures in the talks.

According to them, the warnings were transmitted through intermediaries.

The New York Times was the first to report the alerts.

There were, until Friday (26), no immediate indications that US intelligence was aware of a specific plan that motivated the alert.

A senior Israeli defense official has previously spoken publicly about Jerusalem's desire to eliminate high-ranking Iranian leaders, and President Donald Trump has made clear in the past that such actions were complicating negotiations.

In March, he refused to tell journalists who the US was negotiating with in Iran because "I don't want them to get killed."

"You know, it's a little difficult," he said. "They've already eliminated everyone."

In response to the original New York Times report, the Israeli prime minister's office wrote on the X network: "As usual, The New York Times' latest story about Israel and Iranian negotiators is fake news. A complete fabrication of reality."

A spokeswoman for the Israeli embassy in Washington declined to comment. CNN contacted the White House for positioning.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have at times had sharp differences over the war with Iran, with Netanyahu frustrated with ongoing negotiations and Trump believing the Israeli prime minister is overly willing to derail an incipient peace.

In a particularly tense exchange in June, Trump used profanity to express his disapproval of a planned Israeli military operation in Lebanon, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

Trump administration officials have also been closely monitoring Israel's spy network, which has stepped up its intelligence and surveillance activities on Iranian and U.S. officials in recent months, an American official said.

In the early days of the war, Israel assassinated dozens of important political and religious leaders in the country, including the Iranian supreme leader and, perhaps even more relevant to potential negotiations, its top national security official, Ali Larijani.

But as it became clear that the campaign was failing to bring about regime change in Tehran, the Trump administration appears to have backed away from supporting that strategy, instead prioritizing negotiations with Iran.

Targeting Ghalibaf or Araghchi could have compromised already very fragile negotiations, the future of which is still uncertain.

Although the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding providing for a 60-day ceasefire, the agreement leaves more sensitive issues, such as the fate of Iran's nuclear stockpile, for future talks. And even with the 60-day deal in place, Iran fired on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and the US responded with strikes on Iranian targets.

Source: CNN