Questions are being raised in Iran regarding the whereabouts of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani, who according to The New York Times traveled to Beirut last week to meet with Hezbollah officials. Ghaani was last seen in public visiting Hezbollah’s offices in Tehran last week.
The concerns in Tehran come amid reports in Israeli and Arab media on Saturday that Ghaani may have been wounded or killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
His predecessor Qassem Soleimani was killed by an American drone strike in Iraq in 2020.
According to three Iranian officials cited by The New York Times, Ghaani, 67, was in the Lebanese capital to assist Hezbollah following a series of devastating Israeli attacks that have disrupted its chain of command.
He was last seen publicly in Tehran, two days after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut.
Ghaani was notably absent from Friday’s prayer service in Tehran led by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei commemorating Nasrallah.
An IRGC member stationed in Beirut told the Times that the silence from senior Iranian officials on Ghaani’s whereabouts is “creating panic among rank-and-file members.”
Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Saturday that Ghaani may have been hit in an airstrike that targeted Hashem Safieddine in an underground bunker in Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood late on Thursday. Three Israeli officials confirmed to Axios that Safieddine was the target of the strike.
However, sources told the Saudi news outlets Al-Hadath and Al-Arabiya that Ghaani is in “isolation” following the recent assassinations of top Iranian officials. Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported on Saturday that Ghaani is “in excellent health,” citing security sources.
Safieddine, a potential successor to Nasrallah, has been out of contact since Friday, a Lebanese security source told Reuters on Saturday. The Lebanese security source and two other Lebanese security sources told the news agency that Israeli strikes on Dahiyeh since Friday have prevented rescue personnel from reaching the site of the strike.
Hezbollah has not commented on the fate of Safieddine.
For its part, the Israel Defense Forces said on Friday that it was still assessing the Thursday night airstrikes, which it said targeted the terror group’s intelligence headquarters. Channel 12 reported on Friday that Israeli security officials were increasingly confident that he had been killed.
Safieddine, a maternal cousin of Nasrallah, is the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council. He has been declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States.
