The US has reportedly asked countries in West Asia to warn Iran about a possible attack by Israel targeting Tehran's top negotiators during the ceasefire negotiations that began in April.
According to a New York Times report, Washington was concerned about the targeting of two officials -- Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament.
The US was afraid that an Israeli assassination effort would doom the negotiations to reach an interim peace deal and lead to renewed fighting in the Gulf region, the New York Times reported, citing current and former American officials.
Killing senior Iranian leaders had been part of Israel’s strategy from the start of the war. The war started on February 28 with an Israeli strike that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.
The officials acknowledged that during the intense phase of the war, Araghchi and Ghalibaf could have been considered legitimate targets for Israel, which was intent on toppling Iran's hard-line government.
But after the negotiations started in April, American officials believed that any attempt to kill the Iranian leaders would end the talks and reignite the fighting, the report said.
While US strikes were primarily aimed at Iran's naval and missile capabilities, Israel focused its early military campaign on targeting Iran's leadership, seeking to eliminate as many high-ranking officials as it could.
Among those killed in Israeli airstrikes were Iran's top national security official, Ali Larijani, and former foreign minister Kamal Kharazi, both considered relatively pragmatic figures whom the Trump administration had hoped to engage in negotiations. The two were involved in US-Iran talks at the time of their deaths.
The Trump administration's concerns over a possible Israeli plot to assassinate the two lead negotiators underscored how US and Israeli war objectives, initially closely aligned, rapidly diverged.
While Washington pushed for a peace agreement, Israel remained sceptical even after the initial cessation of hostilities in April.
The initial two-week ceasefire in April received reluctant backing from Israeli officials, while many in Israel feared the United States was ending the war prematurely. Instead of weakening the Iranian leadership, the conflict hardened the country's theocratic establishment, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps further tightening its grip on power.
Araghchi and Ghalibaf have led Iran's diplomatic efforts with countries to secure a ceasefire and work towards a broader peace agreement with the US. In June, Washington and Tehran reached a framework deal aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz and laying the groundwork for subsequent negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme.
Israeli officials and commentators saw the initial agreement as a disaster as it did not accomplish their country’s war aims of forcing regime change, destroying Iran’s proxy forces, and seriously damaging its missile program.
Israeli officials also worried the agreement would put billions of dollars into Iran, allowing it to quickly rebuild after the war and without meaningfully restricting its nuclear ambitions.
A US official told the New York Times that talks between American and Iranian delegations continue and that Steve Witkoff, a special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had productive meetings in Qatar. US President Donald Trump, the official said, wants the peace process "to play out."
In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had Araghchi and Ghalibaf on a target list, but temporarily removed them as the US discussed beginning negotiations with Iran.
The Trump administration learned around that time that at least Ghalibaf was on an Israeli targeting list and asked Israel to refrain, a US official and another official from West Asia, told the New York Times.
Ghalibaf was nearly killed twice since 2025 -- during the 12-day war in June 2025 and again in this year’s conflict, when Israel targeted a secret meeting of senior government officials in a bunker under a mountain, according to three senior Iranian officials and public comments by officials. In both incidents, Ghalibaf was rescued from under the rubble, the officials said.
During the negotiations, Iran has taken precautions aimed at making it more difficult for Israel to strike at senior officials, the report said.
In April, when Ghalibaf and Araghchi travelled to Pakistan to meet US Vice President JD Vance, Iranians sought guarantees from Washington, through Pakistani and Qatari intermediaries, that Israel would not carry out any covert operations targeting the Iranian delegation, the officials told the New York Times.
Following this, Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.
But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.
Iran’s security forces notified the plane carrying Ghalibaf back to Tehran that they had picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran's airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.
Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this on his social media page.
The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, and the Iranian delegation traveled some eight hours by land back to Tehran, Mohammadi and the two officials said.
However, the officials have continued to travel.
In late May, Ghalibaf and Araghchi flew to Qatar for talks and then traveled to Switzerland in June for a second in-person meeting with Vance and the American delegation.