Exclusive Iran’s Khamenei warned Nasrallah of Israeli plot to kill him, sources say

By Samia Nakhoul and Laila Bassam

DUBAI/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Hezbollah leader Syyed Hassan Nasrallah to flee Lebanon days before he was killed in an Israeli strike and is now deeply concerned about the Israeli infiltration of senior government officials in Tehran, three Iranian sources said. .

Immediately after the attack on Hezbollah’s booby-trapped pagers on September 17, Khamenei sent a message with an envoy imploring Hezbollah’s secretary general to leave for Iran, citing intelligence reports suggesting that Israel had agents within Hezbollah and planned to kill him, one of the sources, a senior Iranian official, told Reuters.

The messenger, the official said, was a senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, who was with Nasrallah in his bunker when he was hit by Israeli bombs and was also killed.

Khamenei, who has been in a secure location in Iran since Saturday, personally ordered the firing of a barrage of about 200 missiles into Israel on Tuesday, a senior Iranian official said. The attack was in retaliation for the deaths of Nasrallah and Nilforoushan, the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement.

The statement also cited the July assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Israeli attacks on Lebanon. Israel has not claimed responsibility for Haniyeh’s death.

Israel launched what it called a “limited” ground incursion against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which oversees the country’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, did not respond to requests for comment.

Nasrallah’s assassination followed two weeks of precise Israeli strikes that destroyed weapons sites, eliminated half of Hezbollah’s leadership council and decimated its highest military command.

Iran’s fears over Khamenei’s security and loss of trust, both within Hezbollah and within and among the Iranian establishment, emerged in conversations with 10 sources for this article, who described a situation that could complicate the effective functioning of Iran’s Axis of Resistance alliance. irregular anti-Israeli armed groups.

Founded with Iranian support in the 1980s, Hezbollah has long been the alliance’s most formidable member.

The disarray also makes it difficult for Hezbollah to choose a new leader, fearing that ongoing infiltration could endanger the successor, four Lebanese sources said.

“Basically, Iran lost the biggest investment it had in recent decades,” Magnus Ranstorp, a Hezbollah expert at the Swedish Defense University, said of the deep damage to Hezbollah that , he said, have diminished Iran’s ability to strike at Israel’s borders.

“It shook Iran to its core. It shows how deeply infiltrated Iran is as well: They didn’t just kill Nasrallah, they killed Nilforoushan,” he said, who was a military adviser to trust of Khamenei.

Hezbollah’s loss of military capacity and leadership could push Iran to engage in the type of attacks on Israeli embassies and personnel abroad that it engaged in more frequently before the build-up of its forces. proxies, Ranstorp said.

Iran makes arrests

Nasrallah’s death has prompted Iranian authorities to thoroughly investigate possible infiltration into Iranian ranks, from the powerful Revolutionary Guards to top security officials, a second senior Iranian official said. They are particularly aimed at those who travel abroad or who have relatives living outside Iran, the first official said.

Tehran became suspicious of some members of the Guards who traveled to Lebanon, he said. Concerns were raised when one of these individuals began asking about Nasrallah’s whereabouts, particularly how long he would stay in specific locations, the official added.

The individual was arrested along with several others, the first official said, after alarm was expressed in Iranian intelligence circles. The suspect’s family moved outside Iran, the official said, without identifying the suspect or his relatives.

The second official said the assassination sowed distrust between Tehran and Hezbollah, as well as within Hezbollah.

“The trust that held everything together is gone,” the official said.

The Supreme Leader “no longer trusts anyone,” said a third source close to the Iranian establishment.

Alarm bells had already been ringing in Tehran and Hezbollah over possible Mossad infiltration following the July assassination of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike on a secret Beirut location while he was meeting an IRGC commander, two Hezbollah sources and a Lebanese security official told Reuters. time. This assassination was followed a few hours later by that of Hamas leader Haniyeh in Tehran.

Unlike Haniyeh’s death, Israel publicly claimed responsibility for the assassination of Shukr, a discreet figure whom Nasrallah nonetheless described, during his funeral, as a central figure in Hezbollah’s history who had built its capabilities the most. more important.

Shukr played a key role in the development of Hezbollah’s most advanced weapons, including precision-guided missiles, and was responsible for the Shiite groups’ operations against Israel over the past year, the Israeli military said.

Iranian fears about Israeli penetration into its senior ranks date back several years. In 2021, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the head of an Iranian intelligence unit meant to target Mossad agents had himself been an agent of the Israeli intelligence agency, telling CNN Turk that Israel had obtained sensitive documents on Iran’s nuclear program, a reference to a 2018 raid in which Israel obtained a huge amount of top secret documents on the program.

Also in 2021, outgoing Israeli intelligence chief Yossi Cohen gave details of the raid, telling the BBC that 20 non-Israeli Mossad agents were involved in stealing the archives from a warehouse.

Pager Warning

Khamenei’s invitation to Nasrallah to move to Iran came after thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah exploded in deadly attacks on September 17 and 18, the first official said. The attacks have been widely attributed to Israel, although it has not officially claimed responsibility.

Nasrallah, however, was confident in his safety and had complete trust in those around him, the official said, despite Tehran’s serious concerns about possible infiltrators into Hezbollah’s ranks.

Khamenei tried a second time, transmitting another message via Nilforoushan to Nasrallah last week, imploring him to leave Lebanon and move to Iran as a safer place. But Nasrallah insisted on staying in Lebanon, the official said.

Several high-level meetings were held in Tehran after the pager blasts to discuss the security of Hezbollah and Nasrallah, the official said, but declined to specify who attended the meetings.

Simultaneously, in Lebanon, Hezbollah began conducting a major investigation to root out Israeli spies among them, questioning hundreds of members after the pager detonations, three sources in Lebanon told Reuters.

Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, a senior Hezbollah official, was leading the investigation, a Hezbollah source said. The investigation was progressing quickly, the source said, before an Israeli raid killed him a day after Nasrallah’s assassination. Another raid early last week targeted other senior Hezbollah commanders, some of whom were involved in the investigation.

Kaouk had summoned for questioning Hezbollah officials involved in logistics and others “who participated, mediated and received offers on pagers and walkie-talkies,” the source said.

A “deeper and complete investigation” and purge was now necessary following the assassination of Nasrallah and other commanders, the source said.

Ali al-Amin, editor-in-chief of Janoubia, a news site focused on the Shiite community and Hezbollah, said reports indicated Hezbollah arrested hundreds of people for questioning after the pager saga.

Hezbollah is reeling from Nasrallah’s assassination in its deep command headquarters bunker, shocked by Israel’s success in penetrating the group, seven sources said.

Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy research director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, who specializes in Iran and Hezbollah, described the offensive as “the largest infiltration of intelligence services by Israel” since the creation of the Hezbollah with Iranian support in the 1980s.

The current escalation in Israel follows nearly a year of cross-border fighting after Hezbollah launched rocket attacks in support of its ally Hamas. The Palestinian group killed 1,200 people and captured 250 hostages in an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli counts.

In Gaza, Israeli reprisals have killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

LOSS OF CONFIDENCE

The Israeli offensive and fear of further attacks on Hezbollah also prevented the Iran-backed group from holding a state funeral on a scale reflecting Nasrallah’s religious and leadership status, according to four sources familiar with the debate within of Hezbollah.

“No one can authorize a funeral under these circumstances,” a Hezbollah source said, lamenting the situation in which officials and religious leaders were unable to come forward to properly honor the late leader.

Several commanders killed last week were buried quietly on Monday, with plans for a proper religious ceremony at the end of the conflict.

Hezbollah is considering the possibility of obtaining a religious decree to temporarily bury Nasrallah and hold an official funeral when the situation allows, the four Lebanese sources said.

Hezbollah has refrained from officially naming a successor to Nasrallah, perhaps to avoid making his replacement a target for Israeli assassination, they said.

“Appointing a new secretary general could be dangerous if Israel assassinates him right after,” Amin said. “The group cannot risk further chaos by nominating someone only to have them killed.”

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba, Writing by Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)