WP: U.S. warned Iran about Israel’s aims to assassinate leaders

Senior U.S. officials feared that Israel intended to assassinate Iran’s top negotiators as the Trump administration pursued a high-stakes deal to end the war there and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, current and former officials familiar with the matter said for The Washington Post.

When the United States and Israel started the Iran war on Feb. 28, Israel assassinated scores of Iranian political and military leaders, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while the U.S. military focused on degrading Iran’s navy and missile capabilities.

More cracks emerged after Israel assassinated Iran’s top national security official, Ali Larijani, in mid-March, officials said.

Washington’s objection to killing Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the country’s parliamentary speaker, was so acute that this spring it took the extraordinary step of asking intermediaries to warn Iran about Israel’s assassination aims, the officials said.

In recent months, Araghchi and Ghalibaf have been the key contacts for U.S. officials in securing an initial ceasefire in April and then a framework agreement to end the war in June.

“You kill those folks and you’re killing the pragmatists,” said a U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the U.S. outlook on Israel’s targeted killing campaign.

As far back as March, when the Trump administration began to explore diplomatic options for ending the war, U.S. officials told Israeli counterparts not to continue killing Iran’s political leadership, said a diplomat.

That U.S. officials felt the need to take an additional step and warn Iran that its top negotiators could be killed demonstrates the strain in the U.S.-Israel relationship and the Trump administration’s limited influence over the Israeli government, said analysts.

“It shows the divergence of war aims between the U.S. and Israel and the fundamental determination on the part of Israel’s prime minister to undermine any negotiation that the U.S. might conclude,” said Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official who has advised Republican and Democratic administrations.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

When asked for comment from the White House, a U.S. official said, “The president wants the peace process to play out.”

U.S. concerns about Israeli assassinations were reported earlier by the New York Times.

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