Iran says Israel planned to target Tehran negotiators during ceasefire talks
Iran's foreign minister has confirmed reports that Israel had considered targeting Tehran's negotiators during sensitive ceasefire talks earlier this year. The reporting centres on Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament, both of whom were named as figures of concern in the accounts. According to the supplied material, the issue emerged as diplomacy was under way and raised fears that any strike could have derailed the talks.
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The reports say the United States was worried that an attack on the two men could collapse the negotiations and reignite the war. Washington was said to have quietly warned Tehran through regional intermediaries after ceasefire talks began in April. The concern was that killing the negotiators once diplomacy had started would end the process entirely, even if they might previously have been viewed as legitimate targets during the conflict.
The reporting also says Ghalibaf narrowly survived two separate incidents during the war. One account says Iranian security forces received intelligence that two Israeli jets had entered Iranian airspace while he was returning to Tehran from talks in Islamabad in April, prompting an emergency landing in Mashhad and an eight-hour road journey home. The same material says both Araghchi and Ghalibaf continued to travel for talks, including visits to Qatar in May and Switzerland in June.
The episode matters because it places active diplomacy at the centre of a wider security confrontation. If the negotiators had been killed, the immediate effect could have been the collapse of ceasefire talks and a return to open conflict. That is why the reports describe the alleged plan as more than a military issue: it also carried direct consequences for diplomacy, regional stability and the prospects for de-escalation.
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The supplied rows say the war began on 28 February, when an Israeli strike killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with other senior officials, based partly on US intelligence. They also say Israel focused early in the conflict on eliminating Iran's leadership, including figures seen as more open to negotiation. Among those named were national security chief Ali Larijani and former foreign minister Kamal Kharazi, both of whom were killed in Israeli strikes while involved in talks with the United States.
That background helps explain why the reported targeting of negotiators has drawn attention. In conflicts, the line between military pressure and political signalling can become blurred, but the supplied material suggests the timing of any strike would have been crucial. Once ceasefire talks were under way, the risk was not only the loss of individual officials but the possible collapse of the diplomatic channel itself.
The reports also indicate that the alleged target list was not a new idea. A separate report in March said Israel had placed Araghchi and Ghalibaf on a target list, but paused those plans once US-Iran talks began. The latest material suggests that concern remained active enough for Washington to warn Tehran through intermediaries, underscoring how closely the security and diplomatic tracks were linked.
The fact that both men continued to travel for talks suggests the negotiations did not stop despite the reported threat. The supplied rows say they later travelled to Qatar in May and Switzerland in June to meet US Vice President JD Vance. That detail points to a continuing effort to keep diplomacy alive even as the risk environment remained unstable.
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For Iran, the reports reinforce the vulnerability of senior officials involved in negotiations. For the United States, they highlight the difficulty of protecting a diplomatic process while managing a wider conflict in which allies may act independently. For Israel, the reporting raises questions about how far military planning extended during the talks, although the supplied material does not confirm that any strike was carried out.
What remains unclear is whether the reported plan was ever operationally close to being executed, and what specific intelligence led to the warnings. It is also not clear how the latest confirmation by Iran's foreign minister will affect the talks going forward. The key issue to watch is whether the diplomacy can continue without further escalation, or whether the reported targeting plans will deepen mistrust between the parties.
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