Iranian Quds Force chief spotted at Tehran funeral ceremony

Esmail Ghaani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, was shown on Iranian state television attending a funeral in Tehran on Tuesday morning for slain IRGC commander Abbas Nilforoushan.

Nilforoushan was killed alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike in the Dahiya district south of Beirut on Sept. 27.

Questions about Ghaani’s fate were raised recently amid reports in Israeli and Arab media that he might have been wounded or killed in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiya in early October.

According to three Iranian officials cited by The New York Times, Ghaani had traveled to the Lebanese capital to assist Hezbollah following a series of devastating Israeli attacks that have disrupted its chain of command, including the targeted killing of Nasrallah.

Arab media reported on Oct. 10 that Ghaani had suffered a heart attack while being interrogated in Iran as part of a probe into intelligence leaks.

Sky News Arabia, citing Iranian sources, said that the commander had been moved to a hospital by the Islamic Republic’s security forces.

The investigation into Ghaani was opened following suspicions that the head of his office was in contact with Israeli intelligence “through an intermediary living outside Iran,” Sky News Arabia claimed.

Earlier on Oct. 10, Middle East Eye, a U.K.-based, Qatari-funded outlet, cited “ten sources in Tehran, Beirut and Baghdad” as saying that Ghaani and his associates had been detained as Iran investigates major security breaches.

Iran has “serious suspicions” that Jerusalem has infiltrated the IRGC’s ranks, the commander of one Iranian-backed terrorist group told the website, adding that “everyone is currently under investigation.”

Prior to Tuesday, Ghaani, who took control of the elite Quds Force after his predecessor Qassem Soleimani was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in 2020, was last seen in public visiting Hezbollah’s offices in Tehran on Sept. 29.