Iran’s Quds Force chief missing since Israeli strike on Beirut

Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani, who traveled to Lebanon after the killing last month of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike, has not been heard from since strikes on Beirut late last week, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters.

One of the officials said Qaani was in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold known as Dahiyeh, during a strike that was reported to have targeted senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine but the official said he was not meeting Safieddine.

The Iranian official said Iran and Hezbollah had not been able to contact Qaani.

Qaani was selected by Tehran to lead Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps’ overseas military intelligence service — or Quds Force — after the United States assassinated his predecessor Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

Israel has been hitting multiple targets in Dahiyeh as it pursues a campaign against Iran-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.

The second Iranian official also said Qaani had traveled to Lebanon after the killing of Nasrallah and the Iranian authorities had not been able to contact him since the strike against Safieddine, who was widely expected to be the next Hezbollah chief.

Hezbollah has claimed that Israel is obstructing search and rescue efforts in the area where Safieddine is thought to have been when he was hit, and said it will not comment his fate until search efforts are concluded.

Asked about reports that Qaani may have been killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut, Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said the results of the strikes were still being assessed.

He said that Israel had conducted an attack late last week against Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut.

“When we have more specific results from that strike, we will share it. There’s a lot of questions about who was there and who was not,” he told a briefing with reporters.

The Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, oversees dealings with Iran’s proxy groups across the Middle East, which include Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

(With inputs from The Times of Israel)