When Ali Khamenei led the Friday prayer in Tehran for the first time since Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in January of 2020, Esmail Qaani wasn’t there. His absence was conspicuous.
As Soleimani’s successor at the helm of the Quds Force, Qaani is supposed to be Iran’s most powerful military-intelligence figure. Soleimani was that, and plenty more besides.
By most accounts, Qaani struggled not just to fill Soleimani’s larger-than-life shoes (a tall ask if ever there was one), but to operate effectively in the role at all.
Like Soleimani, Qaani fought in the Iran–Iraq War, but his multi-decade Quds career was spent in large part managing Iran’s eastern portfolio, such as it is. The “Axis of Resistance,” which is to say Iran’s proxies as we know them today, is the western portfolio, which Soleimani built and managed. By comparison anyway, Qaani’s command in the east was inconsequential for Iran’s regional strategy.
It’s not unfair nor entirely inaccurate to suggest Iran’s proxies viewed Qaani as little more than an emissary with a checkbook. A glorified attaché. By contrast, and without exaggeration, Soleimani walked in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as a god among men.
In the course of Israel’s increasingly brazen campaign to wipe out Hezbollah’s command structure and eliminate the group’s leadership, I’ve variously insisted that Qaani’s a dead man walking. In the sphere of Iranian influence, Soleimani ranked above everyone save Khamenei himself. Qaani, despite formally occupying Soleimani’s position, isn’t anywhere near that stature. If Israel was willing to kill Ismail Haniyeh (in Tehran no less) and Hassan Nasrallah, there was no reason to refrain from killing Qaani other than, perhaps, the uniform he wears. But as we saw on April 1, when Mohamad Reza Zahedi was blown apart with half a dozen deputies in Iran’s Damascus consulate, the IDF isn’t averse to killing uniformed IRGC officers.
Over the weekend, The New York Times described the Iranian media as fixated on one question: “Where is Esmail Qaani?” The last time the public saw him, Farnaz Fassihi noted, was two days after Nasrallah was killed. So, a week ago, in Hezbollah’s Tehran offices.
Regular readers will note that in the wake of Nasrallah’s assassination in Beirut, I said Hashem Safieddine — Nasrallah’s cousin whose son is married to Soleimani’s daughter — would almost surely assume Hezbollah’s top role, regardless of what the group said publicly, assuming they said anything at all. That was, as it turned out, the assessment of Mossad, which pivoted immediately to targeting Safieddine. Hardly anyone mentioned Naim Qassem, Nasrallah’s “official” No. 2.
On October 4, one week exactly after the IDF killed Nasrallah, Dahiya shook again from what looked like an identical IDF bunker-busting exercise. The target: Hashem Safieddine. It’s possible Qaani was in the same location.
As of this writing, there’s still no word on Safieddine’s status, but according to scattered reports, he’s incommunicado and presumed dead.
Note that in the immediate aftermath of the strike on Nasrallah, Hezbollah issued a statement confirming that Safieddine was unharmed. The group issued no such notice following the October 4 strike.
Three Lebanese security sources who spoke to Reuters indicated that Israel is striking the area around the damaged bunker in an apparent effort to prevent rescue workers from pulling Safieddine out of the rubble, presumably on the assumption that if he survived the strike, he was surely injured and the longer it takes to reach him, the higher the odds he’ll eventually die from his injures.
“The loss of Nasrallah’s rumored successor would be another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran,” Reuters wrote, in the linked article. That doesn’t even begin to capture the gravity of Safieddine’s rumored demise. He, like Nasrallah, had deep, personal ties to Iran.
While it’s impossible to know if Qaani was in the bunker with Safieddine, he was in the city. The Times, citing several Iranian officials, said Qaani “had traveled to Beirut last week to meet with senior Hezbollah officials and to help the group recover from the wave of Israeli attacks in Lebanon.”
Fassihi, the Times journalist, quoted Iranian media: “If General Qaani is alive and well, the best way to clarify and assure us is to publish a short video of him.”
On September 25, in “Endgame,” I had the following sharply-worded advice for the general: “Without mincing words, Esmail Qaani needs to keep his happy ass in Iran, because if Mossad catches him in Beirut on a day when Benjamin Netanyahu’s in a bad mood, he (Qaani) is going to meet his legendary predecessor.”
Unusual as this is to say for me, I’m glad saying it.
Your deep dive into crypto. Your deep dive into the whole Middle East situation. The market watching and analysis of Capital.. The monthly, which are standalone master work.
You are absolutely the most genuine journalist I have ever come across.
Hear Hear
I generally like Pres Biden, so this is not an attack on him. But I will say, I have my suspicions that Netanyahu isn’t “running circles” around Biden, as the press likes to say. I’m feeling that the US is giving Israel a LOT of latitude vis a vis Gaza simply because Israel outlined their plan (and importantly their capability) to diminish the Iranian ‘threat’ in the region.
It might also explain why Ukraine isn’t getting the actual support promised (and that they badly need), because Putin has already kneecapped his own military (one knee so far, anyway) and is less of an immediate threat, while the prospect of letting Israel kneecap the IRGC is more urgent, since the door to do so was opened by Hamas.
It’s all too distasteful for me, someone who pushed far left past the political middle a long time ago, partially because of issues like these.
What proof is there that Ukraine is not getting all it can absorb from the west.
I am a little skeptical the USA has denied weapons needed to win against Russia. The story for public consumption of the last few months has been longer range western weapons to counter Russia. But with so much Russian stuff blowing up due to lower speed drones why is there any urgency for Ukraine to up the game. I therefore believe that story was manufactured to show the world that the USA is using restraint, when in fact there is no restraint.
Earlier in the year Zelenski said they were short energetics, that is the chemicals that go into bombs. Indicating to the casual observer that possibly they have sufficient production machinery to to make weapons and ammunition but need the chemical infrastucture of the west to help them. Most are likely available by the tanker along the Rhine. More advanced trigger chemicals can come out of factories from around the world. This is believable as any chemical factory to produce energetics would itself be a fat target of the Russians, whilst a few shipping containers would not be. This is also believable as the Ukrainians have claimed capability to make their own 155 ammunition as well as others. The supporting metals industries, energetics and computer chips can come in by container to support this production at lower cost than using high dollar western labor to fabricate and ship ammunition.
I am also in the camp that the reason Putin invaded Ukraine and the reason he does not nuke them into submission is that Ukraine could still have weapons left over from the Soviet empire. I recall at one point a big deal was made to assure all nuclear weapons from the Soviet era were transferred to Russia under Russian control as this was safer for the world. The reports in my recall came from Russia, and they reported success in getting these weapons under control. However with the deep Soviet era infrastructure and Russian proclivity to tell a good story. Who can believe that there is more to the story?
There did appear to be delays and suspensions of Patriot missile batteries supplied to Ukraine once the Gaza war began. I believe they have been resumed, but not certain on that
The middle east war also further depleted global supplies of 155 mm artillery shells. There has been a lag in replenishing supplies as US and German factories add new production lines. They were already operating at full capacity, so it takes time.
I’ll add that my belief in what is happening in Ukraine comes mainly from two sources: Tom Cooper and Don Hill, two war historians that were recommended to me by a friend in military intelligence. As with all sources, they’re taken with a grain of salt and an eye for their own biases. Other than that I trust what they report, generally.
They and others continually point to the vows of the West versus the reality of supplies actually sent. There’s a discrepancy, has been for almost two years now and it continues. The Ukrainian military has been holding out on front lines despite being largely outgunned by glide bombs, superior artillery firepower and non-ending human waves of attacks (though they have subsided in places since the offensive into Kursk). The Ukraine forces lose ground all the time because they just don’t have enough defense against missiles and glide bombs and not enough artillery shells (primarily) to slow the Russian advances further. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians have reduced Russian equipment and troops in very large numbers, something for which the rest of the world should be appreciative of. If they get the increased firepower they’ve been asking for, they may even be able to drive the Russian army back east and regain the territory that Russia keeps grinding away at.
First news source I turn to…..after I get my cup of coffee 🙂