°®Âþµº

The commander of Iran's Quds Force Esmail Qaani is in "good health", the unit's deputy commander said Monday, following claims he had possibly been assassinated by Israel

Iraj Masjedi said Qaani, who heads the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) expeditionary force was safe and no further statement on the issue is needed.

It follows comments made by two senior Iranian security officials on Sunday that Qaani had not been heard from since a huge wave of Israeli airstrikes on Beirut late last week, which is believed to have killed senior Hezbollah and Iranian commanders.

Qaani traveled to Lebanon after an Israeli air strike killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and IRGC top general Abbas Nilforoushan in Beirut.

Contact with Nasrallah's replacement Hashem Safieddine has also been reportedly lost, with fears in the group that he could have been targeted and killed also in the strikes, which have resulted in hundreds of civilians killed.

On Tuesday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired some 200 missiles at Israel in retaliation for the killings of the leaders. 

It was Iran's second direct attack on Israel in six months, after a missile and drone assault in April in retaliation for a deadly strike on Iran's consulate in Damascus, which Tehran blamed on Israel.

Tehran named Qaani the head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps' overseas force after US President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

Part of Qaani's task in that post has been to manage Tehran's paramilitary allies across the Middle East, as well as in other regions around the world, who have been key pillars of support for Iran's axis allies in the region, including Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad.

These groups have been heavily targeted by Israeli forces in recent months, including the Hashd Al-Shaabi in Iraq, the Houthis of Yemen, and Iranian-led Shia militias in Syria.

When Qaani took over the force after deputising Soleimani for over two decades, he vowed to boot US forces out of the Middle East in revenge for Soleimani's killing.

"We promise to continue martyr Soleimani's path with the same force ... and the only compensation for us would be to remove America from the region," state radio quoted Qaani as saying ahead of Soleimani's funeral in Tehran.

Qaani, 67, was born in Mashhad, a conservative Shia Muslim religious city in northeastern Iran. He fought for the Revolutionary Guards during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, and has experience in overseas operations beyond Iran's eastern borders, including Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He does not speak Arabic, unlike Soleimani who spoke fluently with Iraqi militias and Hezbollah commanders.

He has adopted less of a public persona than Soleimani and little information is available on him online or in leaked diplomatic cables.

Unlike Soleimani, who over the years was widely photographed on battlefields in Iraq and Syria alongside the militias Tehran has armed and trained, Qaani has preferred to keep a lower profile and conduct most of his meetings and visits to neighbouring countries in private. 

He has adopted a low public profile compared to Soleimani - who was seen as a daring, down-to-earth, and charismatic figure - and little information is available on him online or in leaked diplomatic cables.