Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah to flee Lebanon days before he was killed in an Israeli strike and is now increasingly concerned about Israeli infiltration into senior government ranks in Tehran, three Iranian sources said. Are worried.
Shortly after the attack on Hezbollah’s fool pagers on September 17, Khamenei sent a message with an envoy requesting the Hezbollah Secretary General to go to Iran, citing intelligence reports indicating that Israel had weapons within Hezbollah. had henchmen and he was planning to do so. Kill him, one of the sources, a senior Iranian official, told Reuters.
The messenger was a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan, who was with Nasrallah in his bunker when he was hit by Israeli bombs and killed, the official said.
A senior Iranian official said Khamenei, who has been in a secure location inside Iran since Saturday, personally ordered the firing of about 200 missiles at Israel on Tuesday. The Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that the attack was retaliation for the deaths of Nasrallah and Nilforoshan.
The statement also cited the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July and Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Israel has not claimed responsibility for Hanieh’s death.
Israel launched a “limited” ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon on Tuesday.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who oversees the country’s foreign intelligence agency Mossad, did not respond to requests for comment.
Nasrallah’s killing followed two weeks of precision Israeli attacks that destroyed weapons sites, eliminated half of Hezbollah’s leadership council and decimated its top military command.
Iran’s fears for Khamenei’s safety, and the loss of trust within and between Hezbollah and Iran’s establishment, emerged in conversations with 10 sources for this story, who described a situation that threatened the effective functioning of Iran’s Axis of Resistance coalition. Can complicate work. Anti-Israel irregular armed group.
Established in the 1980s with Iranian support, Hezbollah has long been the coalition’s most formidable member.
Four Lebanese sources said the chaos was also making it difficult for Hezbollah to choose a new leader, as ongoing infighting would jeopardize a successor.
“Basically, Iran has lost its biggest investment in the last decades,” Magnus Ranstorp, a Hezbollah expert at the Swedish Defense University, said of the deep damage caused to Hezbollah, which has reduced Iran’s ability to attack Israel’s borders. It’s done.
He said, “This has shaken Iran to its core. This shows how deeply Iran has been penetrated: They not only killed Nasrallah, but also killed Nilforoshan.”
Ranstorp said Hezbollah’s lost military capacity and leadership cadre could push Iran toward attacks against Israeli embassies and personnel abroad, which it did more frequently before the rise of its proxy forces.
Iran made arrests
A second senior Iranian official said Nasrallah’s death has prompted Iranian officials, from the powerful Revolutionary Guards to senior security officials, to thoroughly investigate possible infiltration within Iran’s own ranks. They particularly focus on people who travel abroad or have relatives living outside Iran, the first official said.
Tehran became suspicious of some members of the Guards who were traveling to Lebanon, he said. The official said concern arose when one of the men began asking about Nasralla’s whereabouts, specifically asking how long he would stay at specific locations.
The man was arrested along with several others after concerns grew in Iran’s intelligence circles, the first official said. The suspect’s family has relocated out of Iran, the official said, without revealing the identity of the suspect or his relatives.
The second official said the killing had sown mistrust between Tehran and Hezbollah, and within Hezbollah itself.
“The trust that held everything together has disappeared,” the official said.
“The supreme leader no longer trusts anyone,” said a third source close to Iran’s ruling establishment.
Alarm bells were already ringing within Tehran and Hezbollah about possible Mossad infiltration following the killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli airstrike on a secret Beirut location in July, when, during a meeting with an IRGC commander, two Hezbollah sources and a Lebanese security official told Reuters. Time. Hours after that assassination, Hamas leader Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran.
Unlike Haniyeh’s death, Israel publicly took responsibility for the killing of Venus, a low-profile figure whom Nasrallah described at his funeral as a central figure in Hezbollah’s history, having served as its most important leader. Capabilities were built.
Israel’s military has said Shukar was key in the development of Hezbollah’s most advanced weaponry, including precision-guided missiles, and was in charge of Shiite groups’ operations against Israel last year.
Iranians’ fear of Israeli infiltration at their upper levels goes back years. In 2021, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the head of an Iranian intelligence unit that was targeting Mossad agents was himself an agent of the Israeli spy agency, telling CNN Turk that Israel had seized sensitive documents on Iran’s nuclear program. In a 2018 raid Israel obtained a large cache of top secret documents about the program.
Also in 2021, Israel’s outgoing spy chief Yossi Cohen gave details about the raid, telling the BBC that 20 non-Israeli Mossad agents were involved in stealing the collection from a warehouse.
pager alert
Khamenei invited Nasrallah to relocate to Iran after thousands of pagers and walkie talkies used by Hezbollah were blown up in deadly attacks on September 17 and 18, the first official said. Israel has been widely blamed for the attacks, although it has not officially claimed responsibility.
The official said, however, that Nasrallah was confident of his safety and fully trusted his inner circle, despite Tehran’s serious concerns about potential infiltrators within Hezbollah’s ranks.
Khamenei tried a second time, sending another message to Nasrallah via Nilforoshan last week, urging him to leave Lebanon and relocate to Iran as a safe haven. But Nasrallah insisted on staying in Lebanon, the official said.
The official said several high-level meetings were held in Tehran to discuss the security of Hezbollah and Nasrallah after the Pager blasts, but he declined to say who attended those meetings.
Also in Lebanon, Hezbollah launched a major investigation to root out Israeli spies, interrogating hundreds of members after the Pager blast, three Lebanese sources told Reuters.
Sheikh Nabil Kouk, a senior Hezbollah official, was leading the investigation, a Hezbollah source said. The investigation was progressing rapidly, the source said, before Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli strike a day after his assassination. Another raid early last week targeted other senior Hezbollah commanders, some of whom were under interrogation.
Kauk called in Hezbollah officials and others involved in logistics for questioning, the source said, who participated, mediated and received resolutions over pagers and walkie-talkies.
The source said there was now a need for a “thorough and comprehensive investigation” and purge following the killing of Nasrallah and other commanders.
Ali al-Amin, editor-in-chief of Janoubiya, a news site focused on the Shia community and Hezbollah, said reports indicated that Hezbollah had detained hundreds of people for questioning following the Pagers saga.
Seven sources said Hezbollah was shocked by the killing of Nasrallah in his bunker deep in command headquarters and surprised by how successfully Israel infiltrated the group.
Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy research director at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut who focuses on Iran and Hezbollah, described the attack as “the largest intelligence intrusion by Israel since Hezbollah was established with Iranian support in the 1980s.” Did.
Israel’s current escalation comes after nearly a year of cross-border fighting after Hezbollah launched rocket attacks in support of its ally Hamas. According to Israeli data, on October 7, 2023, the Palestinian group attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and capturing 250 hostages.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli retaliation in Gaza.
loss of trust
According to four sources familiar with the debate within Hezbollah, Israeli aggression and fear of more attacks on Hezbollah have prevented the Iranian-backed group from organizing a nationwide funeral on a scale reflective of Nasrallah’s religious and leadership positions. .
A Hezbollah source lamented the situation, saying, “One cannot allow a funeral under these circumstances.”
Several commanders killed last week were buried in secret on Monday, with a proper religious ceremony planned if the conflict ends.
Four Lebanese sources said Hezbollah was considering the option of securing a religious order to bury Nasrallah temporarily and holding an official funeral when conditions permit.
Hezbollah has refrained from officially appointing Nasrallah’s successor, possibly to avoid making his replacement a target of Israeli assassination, he said.
“The appointment of a new secretary general could be dangerous if Israel immediately assassinates him,” Amin said. “The group cannot risk more chaos by appointing someone only to watch them die.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
