Photo: Lapresse
Andrea Riccardi
In a targeted airstrike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Israeli soldiers killed Hezbollah’s de facto chief of staff, Haytham Ali Tabatabai, who was considered number two in the organization and second only to Secretary General Naim Qassem in the group’s command structure. Tabatabai, who joined Hezbollah in the 1980s and held several high-level roles including commander of the elite Radwan force and head of Hezbollah operations in Syria, was a “veteran and central agent of the terrorist organization,” the IDF said. According to AFP, the Israeli strikes hit the third and fourth floors of a nine-story building in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Three missiles were fired at buildings in the Haret Hreik area, damaging vehicles and nearby buildings, the Lebanese News Agency reported. Tabatabai, born in 1968 in Beirut to a Lebanese mother and Iranian father, grew up in southern Lebanon and joined Hezbollah as a young man. He is wanted by the United States, which in 2016 placed a $5 million bounty on his head.
Tabatabai previously led the elite Radwan Hezbollah force, which was tasked with preparing the invasion of Israel. Israeli officials say Hezbollah has long planned terror attacks like the one on October 7 against communities on Israel’s northern border. According to the US State Department, he also commanded Hezbollah special forces in Syria and Yemen. In 2015, Israel attempted to assassinate him in southern Syria, in an attack in which Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, a senior Hezbollah commander killed in Damascus in 2008, lost his life. Tabatabai was promoted to Hezbollah leader in late 2024, after the IDF removed former chief of staff Fuad Shukr in a raid in Beirut. Following a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in November 2024, Tabatabai was officially appointed as the terrorist group’s military chief of staff. “In this role, he led the reconstruction of the organization,” the Israeli military said. In recent weeks, Israel has stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah, accusing it of violating the ceasefire.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Tabatabai a “murderer with blood on his hands” and reiterated that his government would continue to do everything to prevent Hezbollah’s reconstitution. “Israel is determined to take action to achieve its goals, wherever and whenever,” he added. A senior US official told Channel 12 that the US was not notified in advance of the attack. According to another American official, Washington had known for several days that Israel was planning to intensify its attacks on Lebanon, but “did not know in advance the time, location or targets of those attacks.” Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has called on the international community to intervene to stop Israel’s attacks on his country. Lebanon “reiterates its call to the international community to assume its responsibilities and intervene decisively and seriously to stop attacks against Lebanon and its people,” Aoun said. But Israel has no intention of stopping, answered Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz. “We will continue to act decisively to prevent any threat to the residents of the northern regions and the State of Israel,” he added. Netanyahu’s government is “determined to continue its policy of maximum repression in Lebanon and elsewhere.”
