Ismail Qaani first became known to the wider Western public in 2020 when he was chosen to replace Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by an American drone outside Baghdad Airport.
Recently, Qaani has again attracted Western attention, this time because he survived an attack by Israeli fighters in Beirut. More importantly, since his return to Tehran, he has been interrogated by intelligence services and the theocratic regime to determine whether he is the agent that Mossad “planted” in Tehran to gather critical information about both Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah.
According to Iranian media, Qaani collapsed during interrogation last Friday and was initially taken to a hospital with symptoms of a heart attack and later to his home, where he remains under guard.
But who is Ismail Qaani really, and what are the chances that he is this crucial Mossad informant? For example, there are two records of his birth certificate. The first states he was born in the city of Mashhad, eastern Iran, in 1959, while the second claims he was born in the north of the country, in Bojnurd, in 1957. There is very little information regarding his family status, education, and career within the Revolutionary Guards, and only the fact that he is the father of a son was leaked when he was found in the upper echelons of the elite Iranian military corps.
There are also rumors that a colorful handshake led to the extermination of Nasrallah.
A significant question arises from the fact that, in the official records of Iran, which include biographies of the top leaders of the army and the regime, teeming with references to each person’s involvement in the 1979 revolution, there is nothing at all about Ismail Qaani.
The Meeting with Khamenei
In a rare “autobiographical” interview he gave in 2015 to the newspaper Ramz-e Obour, five years before taking over from Qassem Soleimani, Qaani admitted that his own contribution to the events of 1979 was not significant. “I was present like everyone else,” he said, adding that he did not immediately become a member of the Revolutionary Guards but joined a year later, in 1980, enlisting in a small group in Khorasan.
It was during this period of his life that Qaani would come into contact with Ali Khamenei, who was then a member of the religious committee of that small group, while Qaani was just a soldier. However, later on, the two would meet again, especially at the highest levels of the country’s leadership. Qaani would undergo special training and later join the Revolutionary Guards, rapidly climbing the ranks.
In 1982, Qaani would meet his long-time companion in the Revolutionary Guards, Qassem Soleimani. In the 2015 interview, Qaani noted, “We were all children of war. What united us was that condition, neither religion nor origin. We fought alongside each other, and that made us friends.”
His military “biography” is impressive. He participated in some of the most significant operations of the Revolutionary Guards during the 1980s, such as the Ashura operation, where the Corps captured the strategically important heights of Fasil and Garkoni in 1984. This successful military career would build a close relationship between Qaani and Khamenei.
Qaani would take on his first significant leadership position in the Revolutionary Guards as deputy chief of the organization immediately after the end of the war. From this position, he played a crucial role in the conflict with the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s, as well as in operations to dismantle drug cartels in the same region. It was these operations that would reunite the two comrades, who would find themselves in a shared space again after the battlefields. Soleimani and Qaani were now moving together within the top ranks of the Revolutionary Guards. Within five years, from 2000 to 2005, the two friends would rise to the highest positions in the Quds Force, with Soleimani ultimately being chosen as chief and Qaani becoming his right-hand man.
In the Hospital
The death of Soleimani in 2020 would immediately crown Qaani as his successor, but in essence, the void left by the man who “built” Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” from Tehran to Damascus and from Beirut to Gaza has never been filled. Qaani never managed to gain within the Revolutionary Guards the esteem that his comrade and friend enjoyed, and the first “whispers” about close contacts with Israel and Mossad began to surface.
To reduce tensions within the Revolutionary Guards, Qaani did not hesitate to carry out not one but two internal “purges” within the organization, creating even greater questions, which over the past two years reached even the ears of the Supreme Religious Leader.
After the death of Nasrallah, with whom he maintained very close ties, Qaani decided to go to Beirut to demonstrate that Iran would not leave its closest partner in the region vulnerable to Israeli attacks. Qaani’s arrival in Lebanon was shrouded in extreme secrecy, and the meeting he had with Nasrallah’s successor was a closely guarded secret for Tehran.
Moreover, it was one of the most critical meetings for both Iran and Hezbollah, as the future of the organization now hangs by a thread. Ultimately, this meeting ended with Nasrallah’s successor, Safieddine, dead, and Qaani himself missing for days. When Qaani finally made contact, he was urgently requested to return to Tehran. When this happened, he was arrested, and the interrogations he underwent landed him in a hospital ward.
Now, the very organization that Qaani has served for decades is accusing him of being an Israeli spy. Among the accusations against him is even the leaking of Ismail Haniyeh’s location, who was killed by Tel Aviv last July in the heart of Tehran.
Whether Qaani is a spy or a “scapegoat” of Tehran will become clear in the developments to come. However, one thing is certain: even if Tel Aviv does not kill the leaders of its enemies itself, it has ways of removing them from the front opposing it.
