Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called emergency meetings late on Friday night after Israel launched a powerful airstrike targeting Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iranian-backed terrorist group, at an underground compound Friday afternoon in Beirut.
Khamenei called the meeting of the Supreme National Security Council at his home compound, the first meeting since Israel killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.
Israeli intelligence agencies said in an initial assessment that they believe that Nasrallah was killed in the strike, but cautioned that confirmation was still needed. It is believed that several other top Hezbollah, as well as potentially officials with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were also killed in the attack.
The world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism also pushed for an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a group of 57 Islamic nations, in response to the attack.
The New York Times reported that while Iran responded to the strike by blustering in public statements, privately they were panicking over Hezbollah’s silence following the attack, believing that it was a sign of bad news. Reuters reported that Nasrallah was “unreachable” following the strike, according to sources close to him.
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Iran’s Foreign Ministry claimed that the strikes were an “undeniable war crime” even though Hezbollah, at Nasrallah’s direction, has fired thousands of missiles, rockets, and drones in unprovoked attacks over the last year.
“Therefore, without a doubt, the U.S. regime is an accomplice to the Zionist regime and must be held accountable,” the statement claimed. “The continuation of the Zionist regime’s crimes against the people of Palestine and Lebanon clearly shows that the call for a ceasefire by the U.S. and some Western countries is a blatant deception aimed at buying time to allow the Zionist regime to continue its crimes against the people of Palestine and Lebanon.”