He has not been heard from since Israeli strikes on Beirut about 2 weeks ago. Believed to be dead, or wounded, Esmail Qaani was promoted by Tehran as the head of the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps) overseas military-intelligence service after the United States assassinated Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general and the former commander of the powerful Quds Force.

 

After taking over from Soleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike on January 3, 2020 near the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq, Qaani’s new task was to manage Tehran’s paramilitary allies across the Middle East, as well as in other regions around the world. When Qaani took over, he vowed to boot U.S. forces out of the Middle East in revenge for Soleimani’s assassination.

 

Unlike Soleimani, who spoke fluently with Iraqi militias and Hezbollah terrorists, as well as commanding huge respect among Iranian and Syrian militias, Qaani has preferred to keep a lower profile and conduct his meetings in private. Qaani apparently had travelled to Lebanon after the explosive killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sept 27 in an Israeli airstrike.

His silent thereafter sparked speculations that he had been killed. However, it appears that he is still alive and kicking. It should be a great news, but Tehran isn’t celebrating. In fact, Mr Qaani is now being investigated by the IRGC on suspicion of involvement in Israeli intelligence infiltration and crucially – playing a part in Israel’s assassination of none other than Nasrallah.

 

The Saudi government-controlled Al-Arabiya news site reported that Qaani has been “subject to surveillance and isolation, after the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders”. Middle East Eye, meanwhile, said 10 sources in Tehran, Beirut and Baghdad, including senior Shia figures and sources close to Hezbollah and in the IRGC, revealed that Qaani was “under house arrest“.

 

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Qaani had a heart attack during interrogations and was rushed to a hospital. The report also said Qaani’s chief of staff, Ehsan Shafiqi, is under scrutiny. However, an adviser to the IRGC commander-in-chief Hossein Salami said not only Qaani was in the pink of health, but also would receive a military medal from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

There are reasons why Qaani, who became head of the Quds Force, the IRGC’s overseas unit, is a suspect Israeli spy. And there are reasons why Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confidently announced that not only Israel had degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities by assassinating Nasrallah, but also Nasrallah’s replacement, and his replacement’s replacement.

 

Nasrallah’s presumed replacement, Hashem Safieddine, was killed on Oct 4 in an airstrike in Beirut before he could even warm the seat and before he could even take over Hezbollah terror organization. Safieddine, whom the U.S. State Department designated as a terrorist in 2017, is a cousin of Nasrallah and, like him, is a cleric who wears the black turban denoting ostensible descent from Islam’s Prophet Mohammed

 

Safieddine’s son, Rida, is married to the daughter of the former Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, while his brother Abdullah serves as Hezbollah’s representative in Tehran. The death of Nasrallah’s successor would be another blow to Hezbollah, not to mention the mystery over the identity of his successor’s successor, whom is also eliminated by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).

But how did Israel know who will be the successor of Hashem Safieddine before he was even killed? And you can bet your last penny that Hezbollah deputy leader Naim Qassem, one of the last surviving members of the group’s top leadership, will reject any promotion to take over Nasrallah’s position. Hezbollah is so terrified that it has actually made a U-turn, begging for a ceasefire.

 

The fact that the Israel knew – and eliminated – Nasrallah’s successor’s successor could only mean someone high up in the hierarchy ranking within the Iranian regime has been feeding intelligence to Israel. While the body of Nasrallah had been recovered, the same cannot be said about Safieddine, as Israeli aircraft shoot at any rescue workers or Hezbollah members trying to reach the site.

 

Iran’s initial investigations into the circumstances surrounding Nasrallah’s death have also shifted to the final movements of Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, a Quds Force commander who was killed alongside the Hezbollah leader. Nilforoushan took over from his predecessor, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who was killed in an Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate building in Damascus in April.

On the night before his killing, Hezbollah chief Nasrallah was outside Beirut’s southern suburbs, but had returned to meet with Nilforoushan and several other leaders in their usual fortified operations room. Nilforoushan, who had flown into Beirut that evening from Tehran, was taken directly from the plane to the command centre operations room beneath the residential neighbourhood of Haret Hreik.

 

Nilforoushan arrived first, followed by Nasrallah. However, shortly after Nasrallah entered the room, the Israeli immediately launched the strike that ended the life of the terrorist head along with others who thought they were safe underground – protected by human shield. It’s believed that it was that moment that Netanyahu, who was in New York, gave the executive order to terminate Nasrallah.

 

While Tehran was suspicious, they had no idea who could be the mole. Before the death of Nasrallah, the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh on July 31 in an IRGC guesthouse in the Iranian capital Tehran had already sparked panic and distrust within IRGC, leading to the arrest of more than 40 senior intelligence officers and military officials.

Some reports even claim that officials as high-ranking as Law Enforcement Special Units Commander Hassan Karami were also arrested in the raids. The Independent Persian and The Telegraph report that the IRGC’s specialized intelligence unit for espionage has taken over the investigation into Haniyeh’s assassination, while the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) was not allowed to participate in the ongoing manhunt.

 

As intelligence officers from IRGC and MOIS competed over which faction would be first to find the “spy” through violent interrogation, little did Tehran realize that its biggest proxy Hezbollah would lose Nasrallah. Of course, there were conspiracy theories that Tehran was the real culprit behind the assassination of Haniyeh due to conflicting stories from Iran itself.

 

But Qaani becomes the immediate suspect when he escaped death by backing out of a Shura Council meeting at Safieddine’s invitation on the day of the air strike. The head of the Quds Force was invited to the meeting, which he should have been present, but he mysteriously apologized for not being able to turn up at the eleventh hour. And it was precisely then that Israel attacked the venue of the meeting, so powerful that it demolished four large residential buildings.

It is unclear where 67-year-old Qaani is now. Some sources say he is in Tehran, but others said he is still in Beirut. Lebanese and Iraqi sources say he is being questioned by figures under the direct supervision of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. If he is the Israeli mole, it certainly explains the killing of dozens of top leaders in the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance over the past two months.

 

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October 13th, 2024 by financetwitter

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