Key keywords: Israel Iran assassination plot, US intelligence warning, Iranian nuclear negotiators, Middle East geopolitical tensions, Biden administration Israel relations, 2024 Iran nuclear talks, Israeli targeted killing operations, Mossad covert missions Multiple anonymous senior U.S. intelligence officials confirmed to major U.S. media outlets this week that American spy agencies intercepted encrypted internal communications between Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Mossad operatives in late 2023, indicating that Israeli leadership had greenlit preliminary planning for targeted assassinations of top Iranian nuclear negotiators during the planned restart of indirect nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran hosted by Qatar. The plot, according to verified intelligence documents, targeted 4 core members of Iran’s negotiating delegation, who were scheduled to travel to Doha and Muscat for closed-door discussions aimed at reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from in 2018. U.S. national security officials immediately issued a formal, high-level private warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, stressing that any attack on Iranian negotiators on third-party sovereign soil would not only derail 8 months of quiet diplomatic work to de-escalate Iran’s nuclear program, but also trigger immediate retaliation from Iran and its regional proxy groups, potentially dragging U.S. troops stationed across the Middle East into a full-scale, unplanned regional war. Israeli officials initially denied the existence of the plot in follow-up meetings with U.S. diplomats, before later acknowledging that they had conducted “routine threat assessments” of Iranian negotiating personnel but claimed no active operation was ever finalized. Israel has long been a vocal opponent of any nuclear deal with Iran, arguing that even limited sanctions relief would allow Tehran to fund militant groups across the Middle East and accelerate its nuclear weapons development capabilities. The country has a well-documented history of targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and senior military officials, including the 2020 killing of top nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Tehran, which was widely attributed to Mossad. Since the news leaked to the public, the Iranian foreign ministry has issued an official statement calling the alleged plot “an act of war against Iran’s diplomatic corps” and promising a “crushing, proportional response” if any such plans are carried out in the future. Both the White House and Israeli Prime Minister’s Office have declined to formally comment on the intelligence reports, citing standard protocol around classified operational information. The revelation comes at a moment of already heightened regional tensions, with ongoing clashes between Israel and Hezbollah on the Lebanon border, Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea linked to the Israel-Hamas war, and no clear path to reviving the long-stalled JCPOA negotiations.