BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israel said it had targeted the intelligence headquarters of Hezbollah in Lebanon overnight and was assessing the damage on Friday after a series of strikes on senior figures in the group that Iran’s Supreme Leader dismissed as counterproductive.
The air attack on Beirut, part of a wide assault that has driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes, was reported to have targeted the potential successor to the leader of Hezbollah assassinated by Israel a week ago.
Hashem Safieddine’s fate was unclear and neither Israel nor Hezbollah have offered any comment.
Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told a huge crowd in Tehran that Iran and its regional allies would not back down, two days after Tehran raised the stakes when it fired missiles at Israel, which sent ground forces into Lebanon this week.
The Israeli military has said its ground operations are “localized” in villages near the border, but it has not specified how far into Lebanon its ground forces would advance or how long the operation is expected to last.
Iran’s missile salvo was partly in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Hezbollah secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, a dominant figure who had turned the group into a powerful armed and political force with reach across the Middle East.
Israel has vowed to respond and oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.
“The resistance in the region will not back down even with the killing of its leaders,” Khamenei said in a rare appearance leading Friday prayers in Tehran, mentioning Nasrallah in his speech and calling Iran’s attack on Israel legal and legitimate.
Iran will not “procrastinate nor act hastily to carry out its duty” in confronting Israel, he said, without issuing a direct new threat to Israel or the United States but grasping the barrel of a rifle that stood to his left.
The semi-official Iranian news agency SNN quoted Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Ali Fadavi as saying on Friday that if Israel attacks, Tehran would in turn target Israeli energy and gas installations.
Axios reporter Barak Ravid cited three Israeli officials as saying that Hezbollah official Safieddine, rumoured to be Nasrallah’s successor, had been targeted in an underground bunker in Beirut overnight but that his fate was not clear.
Israeli Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said on Friday afternoon the military was still assessing the damage caused by airstrikes in southern Beirut on Thursday night, which he said targeted Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters.
Earlier the Israeli military reported that it had killed the head of Hezbollah’s communication networks, Mohammad Rashid Sakafi. It declined to comment on the report that Safieddine was targeted.
