Who Took Out Hezbollah’s Hassan al-Laqqis?

Minutes after Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah finished a lengthy televised appearance late Tuesday night, a team of unknown assailants assassinated Hassan al-Laqqis, one of the Shiite group's most senior military commanders, outside his apartment. Armed with silenced pistols, the assassins shot Laqqis several times in the head and neck as he was exiting his car.

The killing of Laqqis represents a major loss for Hezbollah — the most serious since the 2008 assassination of its military commander Imad Mughniyeh. Laqqis is said to have belonged to the early generation of Hezbollah cadres, and was a close friend of Nasrallah's and of the late Mughniyeh. Laqqis' role in the organization was procurer-in-chief. Since the 1990s, Laqqis had been key in developing and acquiring technology for Hezbollah's drone program. 

But most important was Laqqis' role in the procurement and transfer of Iranian first-strike weapons to Lebanon. Since 2006, Iran and Hezbollah decided to focus on developing missile and long-range rocket capabilities (a doctrine that was likewise implemented through Hamas in Gaza). Top officials in the Iran-led axis coordinated the procurement of these missiles. Leading this effort in Iran was Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) General Hassan Tehrani-Moghadam, dubbed the father of Iran's ballistic missile program. In Syria, the effort was coordinated with General Muhammad Suleiman. And in Gaza, the liaison with the IRGC initially was Izzeddin al-Qassam Brigades commander, Mahmoud Mabhouh, and then it was his successor, Ahmad Jabari. Within Hezbollah, Mughniyeh led the charge, in tandem with Laqqis, himself a friend of Tehrani-Moghaddam's.

Other than their role in procuring and strategic weapons to Lebanon and Gaza, what all these figures have in common is that, since 2008, they have all been assassinated. Laqqis, in fact, escaped previous attempts on his life. 

While the obvious culprit for Tuesday’s attack is Israel, two obscure Sunni groups — the Ahrar al-Sunna Brigade-Baalbeck, and the Ansar al-Umma al-Islamiya Battalion — have claimed responsibility for Laqqis' killing. The latter claimed that Laqqis was responsible for “the massacre in Qusayr,” the Syrian town that Hezbollah overran in the summer of 2013.

Some reports alleged Laqqis was responsible for military coordination between Hezbollah and the Syrian regime's forces. There have been recent attacks against Hezbollah areas in retaliation to its involvement in Syria. These attacks have exposed breaches in Hezbollah's security, with some of them, such as the attack two weeks ago on the Iranian embassy, requiring considerable intelligence capabilities. It is not therefore inconceivable that this assassination is part of a Syrian rebel campaign. However, it remains most likely that Israel has finally eliminated a Hezbollah commander it has been stalking for years.

Tony Badran is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies