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Quds Force commander appears in public after death reports
A top Iranian general went missing after an Israeli airstrike on Beirut. There were reports that he had been killed or arrested on suspicion of spying, but he ended up attending the funeral of another general.
Brigadier General Ismail Kani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, has resurfaced after a two-week absence amid rumors of his death, Iran International, Khabar and IRIB reported.
Ismail Qaani was the center of attention at the funeral of Major General Abbas Nilfroshan and was included in the official broadcast of the event.
News of his death spread in early October. Reuters sources in Iran told the media that the brigadier general had been in the area of an Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah positions in Beirut on October 4 and had not been in contact since.
Middle East Eye, citing sources, reported that Karni was alive but in custody and being interrogated as Iranian authorities sought to understand how Israeli intelligence obtained the information needed to eliminate Hezbollah leaders.
“Iran has serious suspicions that Israel has infiltrated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, especially those operating on the ground in Lebanon, and all of them are currently under investigation,” a source told Middle East Eye, a pro-Iran military commander.
Another source stressed that the leak of information about the location of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike, was clearly carried out by Iran.
Iranian sources told Sky News Arabia that Ismail Qaani suffered a heart attack during interrogation and was taken to hospital. They said Qaani's chief of staff, Ehsan Shafiqi, was under close scrutiny by investigators.
Ismail Qaani, 67, is one of Iran's most senior generals. He was born in Mashhad, a conservative Islamic city in northeastern Iran, and fought in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during the Iraq War.
Qani became deputy commander of the Quds Force in the late 1990s and took over in 2020 after his predecessor, Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad. Qarney is responsible for overseeing pro-Iranian groups in the Middle East and elsewhere. Following his predecessor’s death, Qarney vowed to expel U.S. troops from the Middle East.
Reuters, citing sources and analysts, said Kani was not as respected as his predecessor and had failed to forge the same close ties with Iran and its allies. He can communicate freely with Iraqi militias and Hezbollah fighters and does not speak Arabic, unlike Soleimani, who prefers to remain secretive.