Iran’s head of overseas arms trade remains silent since Beirut strikes: Iranian officials

The commander of the foreign military intelligence service of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who visited Lebanon last month after the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike, did not has not been heard since last week’s strikes on Beirut, Iranian officials said.

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.

An official told the news agency that Qaani was in Beirut’s southern suburbs during a missile strike that reportedly targeted a senior Hezbollah official, Hashem Safieddine, although he was not meeting the Hezbollah leader .

A Hezbollah official said Israel was not allowing 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 its research was complete.

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Safieddine would be a likely successor to Nasrallah, who died when Israel launched a strike on Dahiyeh on September 27.

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The Iranian official told the Associated Press that Iran and Hezbollah were unable to contact Qaani after the United States assassinated his predecessor, Qassem Soleimani, in a drone strike in 2020.

The second Iranian official told the AP that Qaani had traveled to Lebanon after Nasrallah’s death, adding that authorities had not been able to contact him since the attack on Safieddine.

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Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute focused on foreign policy and national security, told Fox News Digital that the more senior an official is, the harder it is to hide it.

“Whatever the verdict on Qaani’s whereabouts, the fact that the regime has not been able to bring him to trial to quell the rumors means he is either injured or in hiding,” Taleblu said . “Israel is expanding its advantage in Lebanon against commanders in the Iranian threat network, leading to command and control problems and chaos that generates rumors like these.”

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Israeli army spokesman 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 worked out. devaluation.

Shoshani said last week’s attack targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut.

Qaani’s Quds Force is responsible for overseeing relations with Tehran and allied militias like Hezbollah across the Middle East.

IRGC commander Brig. General Abbas Nilforoushan was killed along with Nasrallah on September 27 when Israeli bombs hit his bunker.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Original article source: Iran’s head of overseas arms trade remains silent since Beirut strikes: Iranian officials