Qassem says terror group will determine timing of response, Tabatabai was meeting with four aides ‘to prepare for future actions’ when he was killed in Beirut airstrike
Hezbollah’s leader on Friday said the terror group had the right to respond to Israel’s killing of its top military chief in a strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
In a televised speech, Naim Qassem called the Sunday killing of Haytham Ali Tabatabai “a blatant aggression and a heinous crime,” adding that his terror group had “the right to respond, and we will determine the timing for that.”
“Do you expect a war later? It’s possible sometime. Yes, this possibility is there, and the possibility of no war is also there,” Qassem said, in his first public comments addressing the killing.
Tabatabai was in a meeting with four of his aides “to prepare for future actions” when he was killed, Qassem said.
Qassem also said he hoped Pope Leo’s upcoming visit to Lebanon on Sunday “will play a role in bringing about peace and ending the [Israeli] aggression.”
Qassem insisted that the Iran-backed group has respected the November 2024 ceasefire that sought to end over a year of hostilities that started when Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 8, 2023, and called for an end to Israeli strikes.
Israel has said it is responding to violations of the truce. The ceasefire agreement allows Israel to strike immediate threats, though longer-term issues must be directed to an international committee. The truce also ordered Israel to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon entirely, though the IDF has forces at five strategic locations.
Tabatabai was the most senior Hezbollah commander to be killed by Israel since the truce, and was said to be a key part of the terror group’s efforts to rebuild following the devastating losses it suffered in the war.
The Israeli army said Tabatabai was a “veteran and central operative in the terror organization,” after joining its ranks in the 1980s and holding several senior roles, including the commander of the elite Radwan Force and head of Hezbollah’s operations in Syria.
During the war, the IDF said, Tabatabai was appointed to head Hezbollah’s operations division, responsible for “consolidating the organization’s situational picture and force buildup.”
In late 2024, after most of Hezbollah’s leadership was killed, he “effectively served as the official responsible for managing the fighting against Israel,” the IDF said.
After the end of the intensive fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in November 2024, he was officially appointed as the military chief of staff in the terror group. “In this role, he led the organization’s reconstruction,” the military said.
According to the US Department of State, he also commanded Hezbollah’s special forces in Syria and Yemen.
Israel has been escalating its strikes on Hezbollah in recent weeks, accusing the terror group of violating the year-old ceasefire and increasingly attempting to rebuild its capabilities, and expressing frustration at lagging Lebanese efforts to disarm the group.
