The hardest party to manage in the Iran talks isn’t Iran

During delicate Middle East negotiations, US officials reportedly asked other governments to warn Iran of a possible Israeli plot to assassinate Iran’s chief negotiators, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. This action, confirmed by two US officials to CNN and reported by The New York Times, was taken due to Washington's fear that Israel was attempting to derail the talks. Israel has dismissed the report as a fabrication. The article highlights that Washington's most challenging task is not managing Iran, but rather preventing its ally, Israel, from undermining the peace process. According to the Times, previous Israeli strikes had already killed other pragmatic figures involved in the talks, Ali Larijani and Kamal Kharazi, whom Washington had hoped to negotiate with. The situation exemplifies a scenario where an ally acts as a "spoiler," a concept usually applied to adversaries, creating an "entrapment" dilemma for the US, which cannot coerce or abandon Israel.