Iranian officials have remained mute on Iran's chief of international arms deals since the Beirut strikes.
A top Iranian military leader who oversees dealings between Tehran and groups like Hezbollah has not been heard from since an attack that killed a Hezbollah official last week.
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Since last week's attacks on Beirut, Iranian officials claim they have not heard from the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) abroad military-intelligence service, who went to Lebanon last month following the death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike.
According to Reuters, two high-ranking Iranian security officials verified that Esmail Qaani, the commander of Iran's Quds Force, had not been contacted since late last week.
Although Qaani was not meeting with the commander of Hezbollah, one official informed the wire that he was in the southern suburbs of Beirut when a missile strike purportedly struck senior Hezbollah officer Hashem Safieddine.
An official from Hezbollah said Israel was not permitting them to search for Safieddine after the bombing in Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday. The group also said it would not announce Safieddine’s fate until the search for him was over.
Safieddine was reportedly a likely successor to Nasrallah, who died when Israel launched a strike on Dahiyeh on Sept. 27.
The Iranian official told the Associated Press that Iran and Hezbollah were unable to contact Qaani after the U.S. assassinated his predecessor, Qassem Soleimani, in a drone strike in 2020.
The second Iranian official told the AP that Qaani traveled to Lebanon after Nasrallah was killed, adding that authorities had not been able to contact him since the strike on Safieddine.
Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security, told Fox News Digital that the higher up an official is, the harder it is to conceal.
"Whatever the verdict is on Qaani’s whereabouts, the fact that the regime has not been able to produce him to quell rumors means he is either injured or in hiding," Taleblu said. "Israel is pressing its advantage in Lebanon against commanders of Iran’s threat network, leading to command-and-control issues and chaos that generates rumors like these."
Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani was asked about reports that Qaani may have been killed in the Israeli airstrike, and he said the results of the strikes were still being assessed.
Shoshani said the attack late last week was against Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters in Beirut.
Qaani’s Quds Force is responsible for overseeing the dealings with Tehran and allied militias like Hezbollah across the Middle East.
IRGC commander Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, was killed with Nasrallah on Sept. 27 when Israel’s bombs struck his bunker.
Reuters contributed to this report.
