There have been several fake good-guy/bad-guy routines played by the U.S. and Israel with regards to Iran. Today the Washington Post and others put out another such performance with claims that the U.S. warned Iran (archived) of a potential assassination:
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.
Washington’s objection to killing Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad 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.
It is hard to believe, as is claimed, that the U.S. ever had or has any reluctance to kill Iranian officials:
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.
The U.S. claim of “limited influence” over Israel makes absolutely no sense. Israel is 100% dependent on U.S. money and protection. The U.S. has used more air defense missiles against attacks on Israel by Iran than Israel itself had fired.
It seems that the “senior U.S. official” who issued the story, likely Vice President JD Vance, wants to depict himself as positive towards Iran to gain a friendlier atmosphere in future negotiations.
A similar story (archived) was handed to the NY Times. That version includes additional exaggerations:
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.
…
In April, Mr. Ghalibaf was set to travel to Islamabad to meet with Vice President JD Vance. But Iranian security officials were concerned that Israel would use the opportunity to assassinate Mr. Ghalibaf or Mr. Araghchi to derail the talks, the officials said.Iranians sought guarantees from the United States, through Pakistani and Qatari intermediaries, that Israel would not carry out any covert operations targeting the Iranian delegation, the officials said.
Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian airplanes carrying a delegation of more than 70 Iranians from the border of Iran to Islamabad and back again when the session was over.
But on the way back to Tehran, an Israeli security threat emerged.
Iran’s security forces notified the plane carrying Mr. Ghalibaf back to Tehran that they had picked up intelligence that Israel planned to attack the plane and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace from its western border near Iraq, the two officials said.
Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser for Mr. Ghalibaf, who accompanied him to Islamabad, confirmed this account on his social media page. The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s closest airport to the Pakistani border, and the Iranian delegation traveled some eight hours by land back to Tehran, Mr. Mohammadi and the two officials said.
If the Iranians were already concerned about the security of its Islamabad delegation why would the U.S. have needed to additionally warn them?
The claim that Israeli fighter jets had entered Iran’s airspace to attack a plane coming from Islamabad to Tehran makes also no sense. The distance between the Iranian west coast and Mashhad is more than 1,000 kilometer (660 mi). Any Israeli jet trying to catch the delegation’s plane would have needed to refuel over Iran. Only the U.S. could have provided the necessary refueling capacity but would not do so in the hostile Iranian airspace.
By the way – I find no mentioning of the affair on the Twitter/X account of Mahdi Mohammadi.
But the story of the Iranian flight landing in Mashhad instead of Tehran was told by Professor Marandi on a Judge Napolitano show on April 15.
Marandi points out that it was a Washington Post OpEd (archived) by Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, on April 8 which had called for the assassination of the Iranian negotiators:
[C]arry out a final barrage of leadership strikes, eliminating the Iranian officials who had been spared for the purpose of negotiations. Iran’s leaders must be made to understand that their lives literally depend on reaching a negotiated settlement to Trump’s liking. If they refuse to do so, they will be killed.
The plan to kill the Iranian negotiators, which came back from Islamabad on April 11/12, was not a plan by Israelis but one published by a former U.S. official in a major U.S. media outlet. The plan failed because the Iranians took evasive measures.
To claim that this was an Israeli idea and operation which the U.S. somehow prevented, as the WaPo and NY Times do now, makes little sense.