Iran’s Quds Force commander Ismail Qaani has not been found since the Israeli attack on Beirut late last week, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters.
Kani traveled to Lebanon after Hezbollah leader Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike last month.
Some facts about Kani are:
-Tehran named Qani the head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps’ foreign military intelligence service after the United States killed his predecessor Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.
– Part of Qaani’s job in that position was to manage Tehran’s paramilitary allies in the Middle East as well as other regions around the world.
– According to people familiar with both Qani and Soleimani, as well as Western military and political analysts, Qani never enjoyed the same respect as his predecessor Soleimani or maintained the same close ties among Iran’s allies in the Arab world.
– While Soleimani took the reins of the Quds Force at a time when Iran’s proxies – from Lebanese Hezbollah to Iraqi Shia Muslim militias to Yemen’s Houthis – had increased their power in the Middle East, Qani presided over their defeat It was of Israeli spies and war planes.
Qaani became the deputy commander of the Quds Force, the foreign branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in 1997, when Soleimani became the force’s chief commander.
– When Qani took power, he vowed to pull US forces out of the Middle East to avenge Soleimani’s killing. “We promise to continue the path of martyr Soleimani with the same strength… and the only compensation for us will be the withdrawal of America from the region,” state radio quoted Kani as saying ahead of Soleimani’s funeral in Tehran. “
Qani, 67, was born in Mashhad, a conservative Shia Muslim religious city in northeastern Iran. He fought for the Revolutionary Guards during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s.
Qani also has experience in foreign operations beyond Iran’s eastern borders, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. He does not speak Arabic, unlike Soleimani, who spoke fluently with Iraqi militia and Hezbollah commanders.
– He has adopted a less public persona than Soleimani and there is little information available about him online or in leaked diplomatic cables.
– Unlike Soleimani, who for years was widely photographed with militias armed and trained by Tehran on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, Qaani has preferred to keep a low profile and conducts most of his meetings and visits to neighboring countries in private. Have been organized.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)