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WASHINGTON — U.S. officials believed that Israel might have been plotting to kill Iran’s top negotiators while Washington was engaged with Tehran in delicate talks this spring to reach an interim peace deal, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Killing senior Iranian leaders had been part of Israel’s strategy from the start of the war. But America’s 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 ceasefire negotiations that began in April.

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.

U.S. officials acknowledged that during the intense phase of the war, Araghchi and Ghalibaf, as senior government officials, could have been legitimate targets for Israel, which was intent on toppling Iran’s hard-line government. But after the negotiations started in earnest in April, U.S. officials believed that any attempt to kill the Iranian leaders would end the talks and reignite the fighting.

The war began Feb. 28 with an Israeli strike that killed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other top officials, based in part on U.S. intelligence.

While U.S. strikes focused on Iran’s navy and missile forces, Israel prioritized targeting the leadership in the early phase of the war, intent on killing as many high-ranking officials as it could.

That included killing potentially more pragmatic leaders that the Trump administration had hoped to negotiate with, such as Ali Larijani, Iran’s top national security official, and Kamal Kharazi, a former Iranian foreign minister. Both men were involved in the negotiations with the United States when they were killed in Israeli airstrikes.

The Trump administration’s suspicions about the possible Israeli plot to kill the two top negotiators show how the U.S. and Israeli war aims, which were close at the very beginning of the war, quickly diverged radically. And while the United States wanted a peace agreement, Israel has been skeptical from the initial cessation of hostilities in April.

The initial two-week ceasefire in April was met with grudging Israeli official support and broad public concern in Israel that the United States was ending the war too early. Rather than being driven from power, the theocratic government of Iran had become even more hard-line, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had only consolidated its control over the country.

Araghchi and Ghalibaf have been the key officials negotiating with various countries in the region to reach a ceasefire and then a more lasting peace with the United States. In June, the United States and Iran reached a framework agreement that sought to open the Strait of Hormuz and set the outline for follow-on talks on Tehran’s nuclear program.

Officials and commentators in Israel viewed the initial agreement as a disaster, because it did not accomplish their country’s war aims of forcing regime change, destroying Iran’s proxy forces, and seriously damaging its missile program. Israeli officials also worried the agreement would put billions of dollars into Iran, allowing it to quickly rebuild after the war and without meaningfully restricting its nuclear ambitions.

A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment.

Asked about Israeli plans and the warning to Iran, a U.S. official noted that talks between American and Iranian delegations continue and that Steve Witkoff, a special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had productive meetings in Qatar. President Donald Trump, the official said, wants the peace process “to play out.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in March that Israel had Araghchi and Ghalibaf on a target list but temporarily removed them as the United States discussed beginning negotiations with Iran.

A U.S. official and a Middle East official said that the Trump administration learned around that time that at least Ghalibaf was on an Israeli targeting list and asked Israel to refrain.

Ghalibaf was nearly killed in both the 12-day war in June 2025 and again in this year’s conflict, when Israel targeted a secret meeting of senior government officials in a bunker under a mountain, according to three senior Iranian officials and public comments by officials. In both incidents, Ghalibaf was rescued from under the rubble, the officials said.

“Today, Mr. Ghalibaf and Mr. Araghchi and other members of the negotiating team have put their lives on the line, knowing the grave security risks, and this is called a real sacrifice, not political maneuvering,” Mohsen Zanganeh, a lawmaker, told local media in late April after the Islamabad meeting.

During the negotiations, Iran has taken precautions aimed at making it more difficult for Israel to strike at senior officials.

In April, 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 Ghalibaf or 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 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 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, Mohammadi and the two officials said.

But the officials have continued to travel.

In late May, Ghalibaf and Araghchi flew to Qatar for talks and then traveled to Switzerland in June for a second in-person meeting with Vance and the American delegation.

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

Shirley Jennett, a retired nurse, loves her spacious ranch-style house in Denver, with its big backyard and gazebo.

“I want to stay here,” she vowed. “And die here.”

She might pull that off. In relatively good health, Jennett still drives to lunch with friends, does her own housekeeping and grocery shopping, and plows through a book a day, usually a mystery. But her children worry about her living alone at 89, especially since she has had a couple of falls.

Enter her new housemate, Susan Beese. Despite working four days a week in retail, Beese could no longer afford her nearby one-bedroom apartment as the rent topped $1,500 a month. She moved out, first staying with friends and then in what she delicately called “a senior women’s facility.”

Now Beese, who is 79, pays Jennett $800 monthly for a bright two-bedroom space, with a bath and a kitchen, on the lower level of her house. As part of the agreement the housemates worked out, she helps plant and water Jennett’s garden, takes out the trash, and cooks occasional meals.

“It’s been a lifesaver,” Beese said. Jennett even welcomed her dog.

Meet the real-life Golden Girls. In the much-loved 1980s sitcom, still in perpetual reruns, the four wisecracking women who share a house in Miami met through an ad on a supermarket bulletin board.

In Denver, the housing matchmaker was Sunshine Home Share Colorado, a local nonprofit that Alison Joucovsky, a senior services administrator, founded in 2016 when the problem became urgent. “My phone was ringing off the hook,” she said, recalling anxious pleas from older residents spending most of their Social Security checks on rising rent or facing yearslong waiting lists for subsidized senior housing.

Home sharing “is a really efficient way to create affordable housing and to support older people who want to age in place,” Joucovsky said. Carefully vetting both “home providers,” who may be rattling around in family houses now too big and too empty, and “home sharers” seeking reasonable rents, Sunshine facilitated 31 shares last year, a record for the nonprofit.

“The cost of developing and building new housing is astronomical, and so is the length of time it takes,” said Laura Fanucchi, president of the National Shared Housing Resource Center and an administrator with HIP Housing, a home-share organization in San Mateo County, Calif. “Why not make use of existing housing stock?”

About 55 organizations around the country offer these services — and demand is growing, driven by housing shortages, rising rents, and sales prices that affect both the old and the young. Legislators in several states are working to promote home sharing as an option. (Personal care is not part of these arrangements.)

The need is acute. About one-third of households headed by someone 65 or older were “cost-burdened” in 2024, according to an analysis by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. That means they spent more than 30% of their income on housing.

Although nearly 80% of those people were homeowners, the center found, an increasing proportion are still paying off mortgages or home equity loans, and most contend with higher taxes, utility and maintenance costs, and insurance premiums.

“A lot of the people calling me to complain about property taxes and inflation are senior citizens on fixed incomes whose children have left, and maybe their spouse has died,” said Pennsylvania state Rep. Abby Major, a Republican, who has co-sponsored a bill that would facilitate home sharing. “They’re a single older adult living in a four-bedroom house.”

Yet most don’t want to relocate. Even if they do, many older adults will find that downsizing has also become prohibitively expensive, as home prices rise and very low interest rates become a memory.

Younger people are similarly cost burdened, including 37% of those aged 25 to 34, and 31% of those 35 to 44, the Joint Center has reported. Home sharing can benefit both older homeowners who need income and people of any age in search of lower-cost housing.

To help increase their reach, some home-share programs now supplement or replace the traditionally labor-intensive matching process with online platforms. (For-profit companies like Nesterly or Roommates.com also facilitate shared housing.)

“It’s like online dating, except that people who have rooms can meet people who need rooms,” said Candice Smith, executive director of HomeShare Oregon. “And it’s a lot more secure.” HomeShare’s online platform has drawn close to 7,000 providers and seekers over five years.

Further support has come from the city of Portland, which this year announced a pilot program to pay $1,000 to homeowners who make a spare room available (or $1,500 for two rooms) through qualified home-share programs.

In addition, legislators in several states have introduced or passed bills that prohibit municipalities from unduly restricting homeowners who want to rent spare rooms to nonfamily members. Sponsors in Pennsylvania and Connecticut actually call them Golden Girls bills, and they’ve drawn bipartisan support.

“So many young people have basically given up on buying a home,” said Colorado state Rep. Manny Rutinel, a Democrat. He helped pass a 2024 law prohibiting cities and counties from limiting the number of unrelated people who could live together in a single dwelling.

In Pennsylvania, state Rep. Tarik Khan steered a similar bill through the House in June; it awaits a Senate vote. “It doesn’t make sense that your cousin can move in but someone unrelated to you can’t,” said Khan, a Democrat.

The Pennsylvania bill caps the number of nonfamily occupants in a home at five; Connecticut’s limit would be three. That bill passed the Senate in April, and then died without a vote in the House. But the bill sponsors plan to reintroduce it next session.

Home sharing can’t solve the housing crisis, its fans acknowledge. But it could make a dent, potentially unlocking thousands of spare bedrooms across the country without requiring new construction that would change the character of neighborhoods.

Admittedly, matching homeowners with those who want to rent a room becomes a delicate process. Home-share staff members typically interview the individual parties, run background checks, verify incomes, coordinate initial phone calls and meetings, and mediate if problems later arise.

They also help applicants sift through the myriad lifestyle preferences that can torpedo a match. “Living together isn’t easy,” Fanucchi said. Will the home provider accept smokers, pets, visitors? Does the sharer work from home? Or need to park a car? Who sets the thermostat?

Sometimes the agreement includes a “service exchange,” in which the newcomer does a few hours of chores such as snow shoveling, shopping, or some meal preparation in return for reduced rent.

Jenlyn and Larry Boyer, for instance, have lived in their ranch house in suburban Broomfield, Colo., for 31 years and never want to leave. But Jenlyn Boyer, who is 80, has “gotten unsteady” and uses a walker. Her husband, 70, suffers chronic fibromyalgia pain and needs a wheelchair.

Because they now pay for tasks that they used to undertake themselves, and because inflation has undermined their finances, “I had an epiphany,” Jenlyn Boyer said. “We need more help and we need more money.”

Six months ago, through Sunshine Home Share, they met a 46-year-old graduate student whose monthly rent had doubled to an unmanageable $2,000.

The student moved into their furnished downstairs bedroom/family room with a bathroom, a small refrigerator and a microwave. In exchange for about 10 hours of dishwashing a month, she pays a reduced rent of $600.

The additional income has helped the Boyers cover expenses like van repairs and wheelchair batteries. But they also enjoy chatting with their new housemate.

“She turns out to be just a gem,” Boyer said. “We laugh together a lot.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Times.