Report: Top Iranian general visited Beirut prior to rockets on Israel
Esmail Qaani, who leads Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, has held a series of clandestine meetings with militant leaders across the region in recent weeks, The Wall Street Journal quoted “people familiar with the discussions” as saying.
“The Quds Force chief was in Lebanon last week, where he met with the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad at the Iranian embassy in Beirut,” the sources said. Around the same time, militants in southern Lebanon fired a barrage of rockets at Israel, the largest such attack since the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
“The details of the rocket attack were finalized in Gen. Qaani’s meetings in Beirut, including with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy Saleh al-Arouri and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah,” the sources added.
Rockets were also fired at Israel from Gaza and Syria, and Israel responded by launching airstrikes against what it said were militant targets in those areas.
“In late March, during the early days of Ramadan, Gen. Qaani held meetings in Syria with members of Palestinian militant groups to discuss a possible coordinated attack on Israel,” sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal. He told attendees that Iran had obtained information about Israeli plans for operations against members of both Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Syria and Lebanon, according to the sources.
“Qaani urged them to take action quickly” the sources added. He said that Iran would “provide the necessary tools to carry out attacks to deter Israel from making its own strikes,” they said.
“On April 3, IRGC advisers landed in Beirut to plan for a strike on Israel,” sources people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.
“Gen. Qaani said it was important to attack Israeli targets within days in response to Israeli strikes that had killed Iranian advisers in Syria,” the sources added.
Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas claimed responsibility for last week’s rocket fire at Israel.
Israeli leaders blamed Palestinian militants such as Hamas for the attack from Lebanon and emphasized that they were focusing their firepower on them, and not Hezbollah, a message intended at the time to prevent the fighting from spreading.
U.S. officials were also on alert in the days following Qaani’s meetings after obtaining intelligence that Iran was poised to carry out a drone strike on a commercial ship in the Middle East, The Wall Street Journal said.
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