New Delhi: US officials believe Israel was planning to assassinate top Iranian negotiators while Washington and Tehran were engaged in talks to end the war in West Asia, the American media has reported.
The New York Times Thursday quoted American officials saying the US was fearful that any assassination attempt could put the fragile ceasefire with Iran into jeopardy, and went as far as getting other countries to warn Iran of the possible attempt on their diplomats’ lives.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and politician Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf were on Israel’s hit list, though they were temporarily removed from it when the US started negotiations, the Wall Street Journal reported in March. With negotiations set to be held in Islamabad in April, Tehran sought assurance from the Americans, through Pakistani and Qatari intermediaries, that no covert operations against their delegation would be carried out by Israel.
NYT reports that airplanes carrying the Iranian delegation for peace talks were escorted by Pakistani fighter jets on the way to Islamabad and back. On the way back to Tehran, in fact, Iranian security forces picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane carrying Ghalibaf and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace from its western border near Iraq.
Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to the diplomat, who had accompanied him to Islamabad, said that the plane made an emergency landing in Pakistan’s Mashhad after being informed of the intelligence and the diplomat made the rest of the journey by land.
Assassinating the Islamic Republic’s top leadership has reportedly been part of Israel’s strategy from the beginning of the war. In the early phases of the conflict, while the US focused their attacks on Iran’s navy and missile forces, Israel prioritised targeting their leadership.
But as the conflict has progressed, the aims of the two countries, matching initially, have reportedly diverged. Israel sees the ceasefire as a threat to its aims, worrying that an agreement between them would put billions of dollars into Iran, allowing it to quickly rebuild after the war, without meaningfully restricting its nuclear ambitions.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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