US officials believed Israel may have planned to use the negotiations between the US and Iran as a window of opportunity to kill Iran\u2019s top negotiators, the New York Times reported on Thursday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to the report, US officials were particularly concerned that Iranian Parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi<\/a> would be targeted during the cease-fire negotiations beginning in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n While targeting high-level government officials was one of the goals at the start of the war, which began with the joint US-Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei<\/a>, after talks began, US officials feared that any attempt on Iranian leaders’ lives would reignite the fighting, the NYT wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n US officials were reportedly so concerned, they reached out to other Middle Eastern countries to warn Iran of the potential danger to Ghalibaf and Araghchi.<\/p>\n During the early days of the war, Israel had killed two other officials involved in negotiations with the US, Ali Larijani, Iran\u2019s top national security official, and Kamal Kharazi, a former Iranian foreign minister, according to the NYT.<\/p>\n In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that both Araghchi and Ghalibaf were on an Israeli target list, but that Israel had removed them as negotiations between the US and Iran were discussed.\u00a0<\/p>\n