After losing contact with him in Lebanon… a secret fate for the commander of the “Quds Force”

On Sunday, Reuters reported that unnamed Iranian officials said that the commander of the Quds Force in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Ismail Qaani, who was in Lebanon after the assassination of the Secretary-General of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, had contacted lost with him since then. Israel’s raid on Beirut, last week.

One of the officials said Qaani was in Beirut’s southern suburbs when Israel launched a strike on Thursday, reportedly targeting Hashem Safi al-Din, a possible successor to Secretary- the late Hezbollah general, Hassan Nasrallah, but that official clarified Qaani did not meet with Safi al-Din.

The official said Iran and Hezbollah have not been able to contact Qaani since then.

Israel is hitting several targets in the southern suburbs in a campaign it is launching against Hezbollah, with the support of Iran.

The second official said Qaani went to Lebanon after Nasrallah’s assassination, and Iranian authorities lost contact with him since the strike allegedly targeting Safi al-Din.

Hezbollah has not yet commented on what happened to Safi al-Din.

The Quds Force, the overseas branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, oversees dealing with Tehran-linked groups in the Middle East, such as Hezbollah.

The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Abbas Nilfroshan, was killed along with Nasrallah when his underground headquarters were bombed by Israeli missiles on September 27.

In the same context, the official of Hezbollah, Mahmoud Qamati, said on Sunday that he had no information about the loss of Qaani, and that the group was also looking for the truth about this matter.

Qamati, in statements to Iraqi television, said that Israel will not allow the search for Hashem Safi al-Din to continue after he was bombed in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Thursday.

The fate of Safi Al-Din is still unknown.

Qamati pointed out that it will take some time to choose a new Secretary-General for Hezbollah, pointing out that the organization is governed by both internally, stressing that “the Secretary-General’s group still in Lebanon… it’s still in the south. we want a proper burial for his Eminence.” He will be buried in the suburbs when conditions permit.”

Who is Ismail Qaani?

Tehran appointed Qaani as head of the Revolutionary Guards’ external military intelligence unit, after the United States assassinated his predecessor, Qassem Soleimani, in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

Part of Qaani’s job is to manage Tehran’s paramilitary alliances throughout the Middle East, as well as in other regions around the world.

People familiar with Qaani, Soleimani, and Western military and political analysts said that Qaani never received the same respect as his predecessor, Soleimani, and that his close relations among Iran’s allies in the Arab world.

While Soleimani took control of the Quds Force at a time when the power of Iran’s allies increased in the Middle East, from Hezbollah in Lebanon, through the Shiite armed groups in Iraq, to ​​the Houthis in Yemen, Qaani took his leadership at his a time when they were targeted by spies and Israeli warplanes.

Qaani became the deputy commander of the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guard’s external branch, in 1997 when Soleimani became the force’s commander.

When Qaani took office, he promised to expel American forces from the Middle East in retaliation for Soleimani’s assassination.

Official radio quoted Qaani as saying before Soleimani’s funeral in Tehran: “We pledge to continue the path of the martyr Soleimani with the same force…

Qaani, 67, was born in Mashhad, a religiously conservative Shiite city in northeastern Iran, and fought in the ranks of the Revolutionary Guard during the First Gulf War in the 1980s.

Qaani also has experience operating in other countries beyond Iran’s eastern borders, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, and does not speak Arabic, unlike Soleimani, who spoke fluently with armed groups Iraq and Hezbollah leaders.

Qaani preferred not to appear publicly like Soleimani, and little information about him is available online or in leaked diplomatic cables.

Unlike Soleimani, who was photographed many times over the years on the battlefields in Iraq and Syria alongside the armed groups supported by Tehran, Qaani preferred to hide from the vision and keeps most of his meetings and visits to other countries in secret.