Histories of Hezbollah’s assassinated top military commander, likely candidates to replace him

On Sunday, September 23, 2025, an Israeli airstrike targeted the third and fourth floors of a residential building on Al Arid Street in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of Beirut’s southern Dahiyeh suburbs with three missiles. The strike killed Hezbollah’s de facto chief of staff, Haitham Ali Tabatabai, and four other Hezbollah operatives—Qassem Hussain Berjawi, Mustafa Asaad Berro, Rifaat Ahmad Hussain, and Ibrahim Ali Hussain—and wounded 28 people.

It was Israel’s first strike on Beirut since June 5, 2025, when it targeted a Hezbollah drone production facility. It was also the most high-profile assassination of a Hezbollah figure by the Israelis since the November 27, 2024, ceasefire went into effect.

Who was Tabatabai?

According to Hezbollah, Haitham Ali Tabatabai, aka Abu Ali Tabatabai, was born on November 5, 1968, in Bashoura, a neighborhood of Beirut just south of the Grand Serail seat of government and Nejmeh Square. According to some sources, his father was an Iranian, while his mother was Lebanese.

Tabatabai’s official eulogy says he joined “the ranks of the Islamic Resistance at their foundation and underwent several military and command training courses.” Hezbollah posthumously credited Tabatabai, 57 years old at the time of his death, with “over 40 years of secret jihadist activity.” However, as Hezbollah’s official genesis dates to June 1982, when Tabatabai would have been 13, it is likelier that he joined its ranks sometime in the mid to late 1980s, which would place him on the cusp between the organization’s founding and second generations.

From there, Tabatabai gradually rose in the organization’s ranks. Hezbollah claims he had a “central role in repelling the ‘Israeli aggression’ against Lebanon in 1993 and 1996,” referring, respectively, to Israel’s Operation Accountability and Operation Grapes of Wrath against Hezbollah. The group’s eulogy, however, does not elaborate on Tabatabai’s specific role during those two conflicts.

During the 1990s, Tabatabai also commanded more routine operations against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon. Between 1996 and May 25, 2000 (the date of Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon), he was given command of operations in the Nabatieh Sector of south Lebanon. Tabatabai was also one of the operational commanders of Hezbollah’s October 7, 2000, cross-border raid in the Har Dov/Shebaa Farms, in which three Israeli soldiers were ambushed and kidnapped. The Hezbollah squad conducting the operation hit the Israeli patrol with a rocket, entered Israeli territory in a Range Rover after blasting a hole in the frontier fence, seized the captive soldiers, and quickly returned to Lebanon. The three soldiers’ bodies were returned to Israel in a prisoner swap on January 29, 2004.

Subsequently, Tabatabai was given command of Hezbollah’s Khiam Sector between November 2000 and 2008. During that time, he commanded the group’s operations there during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War.

After the assassination of Hezbollah’s then-Chief of Staff Imad Mughniyeh on February 12, 2008, Tabatabai took command of Hezbollah’s strike forces, which he reorganized as the Radwan Force commando unit, named in honor of the fallen Mughniyeh. Tabatabai then set about improving the Radwan Force’s capabilities.

When the Syrian Civil War broke out, Hezbollah said Tabatabai was among Hezbollah’s commanders who planned and led operations against Islamic State and Al Nusrah Front militants “on Lebanon’s eastern borders.” This detail suggests that Tabatabi played a key role in Hezbollah’s involvement in the 2017 Battle of Arsal. 

Hezbollah says that in subsequent years, Tabatabai was “tasked with senior leadership roles within the [Iran-led] Resistance Axis on various fronts,” without specifying the nature or location of those roles. The statement on Tabatabai’s assassination issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), however, says that he also “commanded Hezbollah’s operations in Syria,” including “strengthening Hezbollah’s entrenchment in th[at] country.”

Strengthening the IDF’s claim, Tabatabai was one of the intended targets of the Mazraat Amal airstrike in Syria’s Quneitra on January 18, 2025. The strike killed six Hezbollah operatives, including Jihad Mughniyeh and field commander Mohammad Issad, plus Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi. At the time, Tabatabei was erroneously assumed to have been killed in the explosion. Hezbollah has posthumously confirmed that he was an intended target of the Quneitra strike.

Tabatabai assumed a senior role in Hezbollah’s Unit 3800, which is responsible for training and supporting Shiite militias in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control added Tabatabi to its Specially Designated Nationals list on October 20, 2016, and the State Department subsequently designated him as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) on October 26, 2016, both for Hezbollah-related activities in Syria and Yemen. Since then, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program offered a $5 million bounty for information on Tabatabai.

With the onset of the October 7 War, Hezbollah appointed Tabatabai to command the “operations section of the Islamic Resistance,” which he did until the war of attrition between Israel and Hezbollah escalated into a full conflict in late September 2024. At that time, Hezbollah claims, Tabatabai was “one of the senior jihadi commanders who commanded and oversaw” the group’s operations in what it has dubbed “the Battle of Uwli Al Ba’s,” the phase of the war that lasted from late September to November 27, 2024. Hezbollah also claims he was the target of several Israeli assassination attempts during the year-long conflict. After the war, Hezbollah says, Tabatabai “assumed responsibility for military leadership in the Islamic Resistance.” In other words, he became Hezbollah’s de facto chief of staff.

According to the IDF, between November 2024 and his assassination last Sunday, Tabatabai’s “duties included leading the organization’s regeneration.”  According to Israeli Army Radio, Tabatabai led this effort and Hezbollah’s military command alongside Mohammad Haydar, who was previously deceased Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s senior security advisor, with responsibility for the group’s forces in Syria and security-military affairs in south Lebanon. The IDF also said Tabatabai “commanded most of the units in Hezbollah and worked hard to restore their readiness for war with Israel.”

Tabatabai’s likely successors

Israel severely degraded Hezbollah’s senior leadership during the 2023-2024 war. However, those cadres, including what the group dubs its “Founding Generation,” have not been entirely depleted. The likeliest potential successors include Mohammad Haydar and Talal Husni (or Hussain) Hamiyeh.

Mohammad Haydar

Mohammad Ali Haydar, also known as Abu Ali, was born on November 25 or October 2, 1959, according to various sources, in Qabrikha in the Nabatieh Governorate’s Marjayoun District.

Some sources claim Haydar began studying at the American University of Beirut’s Institute of Applied Sciences in 1979, but never finished a degree. Haydar holds a certificate in vocational education and devoted many years to religious studies in Shiite seminaries in Lebanon and Iran.

Sometime in the 1980s, Haydar held an administrative post at Middle East Airlines (MEA), Lebanon’s national carrier, while also gradually integrating into Hezbollah’s organizational structure. He subsequently resigned from MEA, devoting himself fully to organizational duties. Haydar has reportedly undergone several training courses within Hezbollah, including developing high-level strategies, supervisory management of individuals and institutions, strategic planning, and the techniques and terminology of political work. Precise dates for these life events are not publicly available.

Haydar has served as the director of Hezbollah’s Al Manar Television and was the brother-in-law of Mohammad Afif, Hezbollah’s former head of media affairs, whom Israel killed on November 17, 2024.

Haydar ran for election to the Lebanese parliament in 2005 and was elected to the 2005-2009 term for the Marjayoun-Hasbaya Districts. However, reports say he “suddenly disappeared from political and media work” after the assassination of Mughniyeh—with whom he was very close—in 2008, resigning his parliamentary seat.

All public traces of Haydar subsequently disappeared. After Mughniyeh’s assassination, he quickly rose in stature within Hezbollah, becoming one of the most influential founders of the group’s security apparatus and overseeing its military operations room. According to some reports, global intelligence services believe Haydar became a field commander and then a “jihadist commander,” or a member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council. By late 2019, the US State Department described him as a “senior leader within Hizballah’s Jihad Council.”

Haydar is known to have overseen Hezbollah’s Unit/Bureau 113, which is part of the group’s external operations architecture. In this role, Haydar oversaw several Hezbollah networks operating outside of Lebanon and was responsible for appointing commanders to many of the group’s units. Some sources claim he was a target of one of the Israeli loitering munitions that hit Beirut on August 25, 2019, one of which exploded in Mahallet Maawad in Dahiyeh. This, some reports claim, is because of his involvement in Hezbollah’s precision-guided missile program. On September 19, 2019, the State Department designated him as an SDGT.

Haydar has been described as one of former Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah’s advisors, and was also closely linked, perhaps by familial ties, to Wafic Safa, the head of Hezbollah’s Liaison and Coordination Unit. He has also been described as the group’s top security official, the head of Hezbollah’s fighters in Syria, and the head of Hezbollah’s military and security affairs in South Lebanon. It is likely in the latter capacity that he, as some reports claim, oversaw operations against Israel in late 2024.

By late 2023, Haydar was reportedly responsible for Hezbollah’s classified military projects that the group manages alongside the IRGC-Quds Force, particularly its Unit 8000, which is responsible for transferring weapons and advisers directly to Latakia, Aleppo, and Damascus.

Israel reportedly targeted Haydar for assassination in Beirut on November 23, 2024, but apparently failed. After the war, he was reportedly appointed to head Hezbollah’s military command alongside Tabatabai, and together they oversaw Hezbollah’s regeneration efforts.

Talal Husni (or Hussain) Hamiyeh

Talal Hamiyeh has been floated as a potential candidate for Hezbollah’s top military post since then-Chief of Staff Mustafa Badreddine’s assassination on May 12, 2016, and again after the assassination of Badreddine’s successor, Fuad Shukr, on July 30, 2024.

Like most of Hezbollah’s military commanders, Hamiyeh, also known as Ismat Mayzarani and Abu Jaafar, is a shadowy figure, earning him the moniker “the ghost.” Underscoring this ambiguity, his dates of birth are variously given as November 27, 1952; March 05, 1958; December 08, 1958; or March 18, 1960. His place of birth is likewise disputed. The United States Government has stated his place of birth as Sujud, in the South Lebanon Governorate’s Jezzine District, or Taraya in the Baalbek-Hermel Governorate’s Baalbek District. Other sources say Brital, in the Baalbek District.

Before joining Hezbollah, Hamiyeh worked as an administrative employee at Beirut International Airport until 1982. He joined Hezbollah sometime in the mid-1980s, becoming part of the organization’s founding generation and operating out of the Burj al Barajneh neighborhood of Dahiyeh, just northeast of the airport. At the time, he was tasked with recruitment in that area and oversaw several Hezbollah operatives who, in time, would become some of the group’s most significant operational commanders. In short order, Hamiyeh would become Imad Mughniyeh’s deputy and, in that capacity, has been linked to:

• Attacks against US personnel and assets in Lebanon, including the US Embassy bombing in Beirut on April 18, 1983, and the Marine Corps Barracks Bombing on October 23, 1983, though this is not confirmed.
• The hijacking of TWA Flight 847 on June 14, 1985.
• The 1992 Israeli Embassy and 1994 AMIA Jewish Community center bombings in Buenos Aires, based on an intercepted call with Mughniyeh in which he describes the bombings as “our project” in Argentina.
• The 1996 Khobar Towers Bombing in Saudi Arabia.

In addition to working closely with Mughniyeh, Hamiyeh is reported to have worked alongside Mustafa Badreddine and Ahmad Vahidi, the latter of whom previously served as the head of the IRGC’s Qods Force. Hamiyeh has also reportedly been a senior member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council since 2008. Some reports suggest he was appointed in 2011 to replace Badreddine as the commander of Hezbollah’s military operations after Badreddine was implicated in former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri’s assassination on February 14, 2005.

A 2011 report also indicated that Hamiyeh was closely linked to then-Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, stating that he “answer[ed] directly” to Nasrallah and to then-Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani. On September 13, 2012, the US Treasury Department designated Hamiyeh “for providing support to Hizballah’s terrorist activities in the Middle East and around the world.” On October 10, 2017, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program offered a $7 million reward for information on him.

Hamiyeh’s last confirmed post was as the commander of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization, also known as Unit 910. This unit is responsible for planning operations and attacks outside of Lebanon that target Israelis and Americans, according to the US State Department.

David Daoud is Senior Fellow at at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Israel, Hezbollah, and Lebanon affairs.