Iran’s chief of overseas arms dealings radio silent since Beirut strikes: Iranian officials
A top Iranian military leader who oversees dealings between Tehran and groups like Hezbollah has not been heard from since an attack that killed a Hezbollah official last week.
The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) overseas military-intelligence service, who traveled to Lebanon last month after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike, has not been heard from since last week’s strikes on Beirut, Iranian officials say.
Reuters reported that two senior Iranian security officials confirmed that Iran’s Quds Force commander, Esmail Qaani, had not been heard from since late last week.
One official told the wire Qaani was in the southern suburbs of Beirut during a missile strike that reportedly targeted senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, though he was not meeting with the Hezbollah leader.
An official from Hezbollah said Israel was not permitting them to search for Safieddine after the bombing in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday. The group also said it would not announce Safieddine’s fate until the search for him was over.
Safieddine was reportedly a likely successor to Nasrallah, who died when Israel launched a strike on Dahiyeh on Sept. 27.
The Iranian official told the Associated Press that Iran and Hezbollah were unable to contact Qaani after the U.S. assassinated his predecessor, Qassem Soleimani, in a drone strike in 2020.
The second Iranian official told the AP that Qaani traveled to Lebanon after Nasrallah was killed, adding that authorities had not been able to contact him since the strike on Safieddine.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security, told Fox News Digital that the higher up an official is, the harder it is to conceal.
"Whatever the verdict is on Qaani’s whereabouts, the fact that the regime has not been able to produce him to quell rumors means he is either injured or in hiding," Taleblu said. "Israel is pressing its advantage in Lebanon against commanders of Iran’s threat network, leading to command-and-control issues and chaos that generates rumors like these."
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Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani was asked about reports that Qaani may have been killed in the Israeli airstrike, and he said the results of the strikes were still being assessed.
Shoshani said the attack late last week was against Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut.
Qaani’s Quds Force is responsible for overseeing the dealings with Tehran and allied militias like Hezbollah across the Middle East.
IRGC commander Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, was killed with Nasrallah on Sept. 27 when Israel’s bombs struck his bunker.
Reuters contributed to this report.
