Posted on 07/03/2026 7:14:11 AM PDT by McGruff
U.S. officials believed that Israel might have been plotting to kill Iran’s top negotiators while Washington was engaged with Tehran in delicate talks this spring to reach an interim peace deal, according to current and former American officials.
Killing senior Iranian leaders had been part of Israel’s strategy from the start of the war. But American concerns about the targeting of two particular Iranian officials — Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Parliament — spiked during delicate cease-fire negotiations that began in April.
Fearful that an Israeli assassination effort would doom the negotiations, the United States, according to some of the officials, went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials.
U.S. officials acknowledged that during the intense phase of the war, Mr. Araghchi and Mr. Ghalibaf, as senior government officials, could have been legitimate targets for Israel
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Sounds like a couple of the NYSlimes wet dreamers.
Please, what utter caca.
IIRC, when they were in Switzerland and Trump didn’t like how things were going, Trump said the Iranian team might not make it home, as a threat, not a warning.
Yes. Well, some people on Free Republic are so tuned into leftist political Trump Derangement Syndrome that they read these things from the New York Times article with no humans named as sources and accept it as truth.
I can sense the typical hasbara normalizing regression coming up...
1.) “There is no way that happened. You guys are crazy!”
2.) “I really don’t think that happened.”
3.) “It didn’t happen exactly the way you guys are saying.”
4.) “Who really cares if it happened? What’s the big deal? Why are you so obsessed with it?”
5.) “I don’t know if it really happened, but it should have happened.”
6.) “You are antisemitic for being upset that it happened.”
Like clockwork.
Confirmation bias.
Israel knows these are just actors bamboozling Team Trump.
They have no authority to make any concession whatsoever.
They come to the negotiating table without a gram of enriched uranium.
Did Team Trump even ask them to come with a gram of enriched uranium to hand over to Team Trump as a symbolic show of willingness to give up the enriched uranium?
US using good cop bad cop.
The Slimes spinning fantasy again. 🙄
Ahhh! So it wasn’t the Israelis who were going to kill the emissaries, it was the US who was going to do it?
Or were we going to do it under the forceful hypnotic trance command of the Israelis who held us in their sway?
Or were the Americans AND the Israelis planning to assassinate the Iranian negotiators as a team effort?
It is hard to keep up with all the possibilities.
I saw there were only two NYT “journalists” on this “article”. If there were three more added, they could have squeezed out enough inspiration to cover all the possibilities. It was too much for just two of their staff.
Thinkin’ the irgc head cheeses are more an issue than the negotiators.
😊👍🇺🇸
True. So if Israel was set on killing negotiaters, it would only be a precedent to what Trump would do also.
7). “I don’t like what’s being reported so it must be all lies. Typical TDS propaganda”.
BINGO! You win today’s prize for a factual comment.
Or many will read the title of a thread, treat it as the Gospel, and go on and comment about it as though Dooms Day is upon us.
It does not automatically mean “we are green-lighting assassinations right now, regardless of diplomatic consequences.“Plotting” here most likely describes Israel doing what competent states do in existential conflicts: keeping dangerous options on the table as leverage and insurance. Whether any specific operation was imminent during the April talks remains unproven by this reporting. The U.S. warning to Iran may have been wise diplomacy — or it may have signaled to Tehran that American pressure could restrain Israel, complicating allied coordination.
Fake News
A superpower throwing its only Middle East ally to the dogs and groveling to make a deal with murderous thugs for two-buck-a-gallon gas at the pump during an election year. What could possibly go wrong.
Not Girliepoof and Arak-cheese! They’re such great sources of actionable intelligence! Ooops. I said the quiet part out loud. Please don’t kill them./nyahaha.
Just more NYT excrement soling FR.
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