As Iran awaited a potential counter strike from Israel on Saturday, senior officials and members of the Iranian news media were all asking a similar question: Where is Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, the country’s top general and the commander in chief of its elite Quds Forces?

Officials in Iran have not yet given a clear answer, Iranian media reported.

“Public opinion is awaiting news that our general is alive and well,” said Tabnak, an Iranian news site. Another news site, Shahreh Khabar, published a long biography of the general’s decades of service as a veteran of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The Quds Force is the branch of the Guards that is tasked with external operations, including overseeing militant groups that Iran supports in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, militia groups in Iraq and Syria as well as Hamas in Gaza. The network is regionally known as the “axis of resistance.”

The concerns about General Ghaani followed reports in some Israeli and Arab media on Saturday that he was either killed or injured in one of Israel’s recent attacks on Beirut. The Guards has yet to issue a statement confirming General Ghaani’s whereabouts.

General Ghaani, 67, was last seen publicly at the Tehran offices of Hezbollah, two days after Israel killed the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon, according to photos posted by Iranian media. The general was notably absent on Friday when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, led a prayer service commemorating Mr. Nasrallah.

Three Iranian officials said General Ghaani had traveled to Beirut last week to meet with senior Hezbollah officials and to help the group recover from the wave of Israeli attacks in Lebanon. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly and asked that their names not be published.

Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday in retaliation for the killing of Mr. Nasrallah and for the assassination in Tehran of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Israel has vowed to retaliate.

Iranian military officials said on Saturday that all the country’s armed forces had been placed on the highest alert, anticipating Israeli strikes. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Damascus on Saturday, warned in a post on X that Iran’s response to any Israeli attack would be “stronger, and they can put our determination to that test.”

A member of the Guards stationed in Beirut who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information said that the silence from senior Iranian officials about General Ghaani was creating panic among rank-and-file members.

General Ghaani is known for his stern and cold demeanor. He has been assiduous in following through on the projects started by his predecessor Gen. Qassem Suleimani, integrating Iranian-backed armed groups in different countries so that they operate cohesively and are self-sufficient in manufacturing weapons, such as missiles and drones, with the training and help of Iran.

The United States assassinated General Suleimani in 2020 in Iraq.

Iranian media has called on officials to confirm the general’s whereabouts. “If General Ghaani is alive and well, the best way to clarify and assure us that he is well is to publish a short video of him,” said Tabnak.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5607102&forum_id=2:#48167745)