The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, has not been heard from since Israel’s strikes on Beirut late last week. Qaani traveled to Lebanon after the killing last month of Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike, but his whereabouts remain unknown. He has not appeared in public and was not present at the funeral for Hezbollah’s chief of staff, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan. Israeli news outlet N12 reported that Qaani was in Beirut’s southern suburb, Dahiyeh, during the airstrikes but has not been seen since. Neither Iran nor Hezbollah has been able to contact him, the officials said. The N12 report added that Lebanese officials have told Israeli authorities that Qaani is dead, although the IDF has not officially acknowledged his death.
Qaani took over leadership of Iran’s foreign operations following the death of his predecessor, Qassem Soleimani, in a US drone strike near Baghdad in January 2020. The Quds Force is a branch of the IRGC that oversees a range of militant proxies across the Middle East and organizes Iran’s military operations abroad. But while Soleimani was a strong presence in his role, Qaani has been less well-known. According to people familiar with him and Western military and political analysts, Qaani has not commanded the same respect or maintained the same close relationships with Iran’s allied militias in the region.
In his time as the head of the Quds Force, he has seen many of its leaders targeted by Israel, including senior members of Hezbollah and Hamas. He has also overseen a wave of missile attacks against Israel from its allied militias.
Iran’s officials have dismissed the reports that Qaani is missing, saying he was not in the vicinity of the strikes and that rumors of his death were part of an enemy strategy to spread despair among Hezbollah and its other ally groups in the “axis of resistance.”
But sources close to Iran’s security establishment said they were concerned about Qaani’s disappearance and that it raised alarms inside the IRGC’s intelligence circles. They said that Qaani was a crucial figure in the IRGC’s operations in the region and that the alleged assassination of his son was designed to create mistrust between Tehran and Hezbollah. This would weaken the axis of resistance and give Israel a pretext to escalate its attacks against it.
Iran’s intelligence agencies are now reportedly searching for his whereabouts. A senior Iranian official said that he was believed to be in Lebanon and could have been hiding with Hezbollah. He was a member of the armed forces who was sent to Lebanon in 1997 to support Iran’s proxies there and had been helping them to develop their capabilities in the region. He was later promoted to commander of the Quds Force, in which he had been in charge of the group’s overseas operations.