BEIRUT: The IDF just reportedly eliminated Haytham Ali Tabatabai in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on November 23. Israeli officials confirmed the target: Hezbollah’s de facto military chief and top operational commander.
Tabatabai inherited the role from Fuad Shukr, a predecessor many analysts considered more strategically important than even Secretary General Naim Qassem. The strike marks the first IDF operation in the Lebanese capital since July.
Israel’s been escalating pressure over Hezbollah’s alleged ceasefire violations and Lebanon’s stalled disarmament efforts. U.S. State Department had offered a $5 million reward for information on Tabatabai, identifying him as the key military coordinator orchestrating Hezbollah operations across Syria, Yemen, and the region.
BREAKING:
Hezbollah’s Chief of Staff Haytham Ali Tabatabai has been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon.
Attacks against Hezbollah will intensify as long as the Lebanese Army doesn’t disarm Hezbollah as agreed on in the ceasefire deal with Israel. pic.twitter.com/z1s3QIFFn4
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 23, 2025
Tabatabai was previously leading the Radwan Force and the Southern Front, and is wanted by the United States as a global terrorist for building Iran’s proxy network and training militias in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. His removal would deepen the decapitation of Hezbollah’s military leadership after earlier eliminations of key “chiefs of staff” figures like Fuad Shukr and Ibrahim Aqil. Earlier,
Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel had struck Beirut to assassinate Tabatabai, calling him Hezbollah’s de facto chief of staff and one of its top war planners, in the first such hit deep inside the capital in months. Hezbollah has yet to publicly confirm his death, but Israeli security sources are now treating the operation as a completed elimination.
Under the terms of the ceasefire that went into effect on November 27, 2024, Hezbollah is required to withdraw its armed forces from southern Lebanon. According to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War, the group is prohibited from operating south of the Litani River. (ANI/TPS)
