After claims he died, reports now say Iran’s Quds Force chief alive but under arrest
Esmail Qaani is rumored to be suspected of involvement in intel breach that allowed Israel to devastate Hezbollah; reportedly had heart attack during investigation
Rumors have continued to swirl in recent days over the status of Esmail Qaani, the head of Iran’s extraterritorial Quds Force who hasn’t been seen in public for several weeks.
Qaani has been conspicuously absent since he traveled to Beirut two days after the massive Israeli airstrike late last month that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and several other top commanders, including an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps deputy commander.
After unconfirmed reports that he had been killed in a subsequent Israeli strike in Beirut alongside a top Hezbollah leader, claims have now surfaced on Arabic and regional media that while he is alive, Qaani is being investigated by the IRGC, of which his Quds Force is part, on suspicion of involvement in Israeli intelligence infiltration and of playing a part in Israel’s assassination late last month of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Earlier this week, the Al-Arabiya news site, owned by the Saudi government, suggested that Qaani was “subject to surveillance and isolation, after the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”
On Wednesday, the UK-based Middle East Eye website, which has opaque funding that some trace to Qatar, also reported that Qaani was alive and unharmed, and under investigation by Iranian authorities, probably in Tehran.
“The breach was 100 percent Iranian and there is no question about this part,” a source close to Hezbollah told Middle East Eye, with Lebanese and Iraqi sources saying Qaani was “under house arrest,” and being questioned by people under the direct supervision of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Qaani, in the course of interrogations by the IRGC, had a heart attack and was rushed to a hospital. The report also said Qaani’s chief of staff, Ehsan Shafiqi, is under scrutiny.
All the reports remain unconfirmed, and none could be independently verified.
Some of the reports have suggested that Qaani came under suspicion by the Iranian government after an Israeli airstrike targeted presumed Nasrallah successor Hashem Safieddine, in a meeting that Qaani was supposed to attend. This is the same strike in which he was previously rumored to have been killed.
On Wednesday, an adviser to the IRGC commander-in-chief Hossein Salami dismissed the speculation, telling semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim that the Quds Force leader was “in perfect health,” and that he would in fact receive a military honor from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “in the next few days.”
Tehran named Qaani the head of the IRGC’s Quds Force after the United States assassinated his powerful predecessor Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020. The IRGC is a US-designated terrorist organization.
The Quds Force spearheads dealings with Iran’s proxy groups across the Middle East, which include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Iran’s proxy forces in the Middle East have been attacking Israel since October 7, 2023, when the Hamas terror group launched a cross-border assault into the country, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, starting an ongoing war.
Hezbollah, which began attacking Israel daily in the wake of the Hamas attack, has suffered a series of devastating security breaches in recent weeks, including the explosions of thousands of their operatives’ pagers and walkie-talkies in an attack widely blamed on Israel, and Israeli airstrikes that have devastated the group’s leadership.
Earlier this month, Israel launched a ground offensive in southern Lebanon to push back the terror group, destroy its weapons stores and infrastructure, and remove the threat of an invasion from Lebanon similar to Hamas’s attack last year from Gaza.
The reported investigation into Israeli infiltration also comes after Iran launched some 181 ballistic missiles at Israel earlier this month, killing one Palestinian and wounding two Israelis, though most missiles were intercepted by air defenses.
Israel has vowed to respond to that attack, in a time and manner of its choosing, and is said to be considering strikes on Iranian military bases, oil infrastructure or even nuclear facilities.
