Israel may have been plotting to assassinate Iran’s top negotiators while Washington was engaged in talks with Tehran earlier this year, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing US officials. For all the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Israel has managed to kill several prominent Iranian leaders throughout 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.”According to the report, some officials said the US feared an Israeli assassination attempt would “doom the negotiations.” The US reportedly asked other countries in the region to “warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials.”The US-Iran-Israel war began on February 28 with an Israeli strike that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top officials.US strikes mostly targeted Iran’s military and navy capabilities and forces, Israel targeted leaders in the early weeks of the war, focusing on killing as many top officials as it could.Some of the officials who were targeted and killed included Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security official, and Kamal Kharazi, a former Iranian foreign minister. Both of them had been involved in US negotiations when they were killed in Israeli airstrikes.According to the New York Times, an Israeli Embassy spokeswoman in Washington declined to comment on the matter.In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Araghchi and Ghalibaf were both on Israel’s hit list but were removed as US negotiations with Iran started. Iran and the United States concluded a round of indirect talks in Doha, mediators said Thursday, as they kept up efforts to advance negotiations and lower tensions following recent exchanges of fire.In June, Washington and Tehran agreed a memorandum of understanding, brokered by Qatar and Pakistan, which included a 60-day ceasefire pausing the war that broke out with US-Israeli strikes in late February, as well as the reopening of the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.President Donald Trump on Thursday said Iran had agreed to “just about everything” the US needs.