FOX NEWS
The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) overseas military-intelligence service, who traveled to Lebanon last month after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike, has not been heard from since last week’s strikes on Beirut, Iranian officials say.
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.
One official told the wire Qaani was in the southern suburbs of Beirut during a missile strike that reportedly targeted senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, though he was not meeting with the Hezbollah leader.
An official from Hezbollah said Israel was not permitting 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 the search for him was over.
Safieddine was reportedly a likely successor to Nasrallah, who died when Israel launched a strike on Dahiyeh on Sept. 27.
The Iranian official told the Associated Press that Iran and Hezbollah were unable to contact Qaani after the U.S. assassinated his predecessor, Qassem Soleimani, in a drone strike in 2020.
The second Iranian official told the AP that Qaani traveled to Lebanon after Nasrallah was killed, adding that authorities had not been able to contact him since the strike on Safieddine.