Israel has killed a senior Iranian commander of the force that oversees and supports proxy militias around West Asia, including Hamas in Gaza, an Israeli military statement said on Saturday.
The Israeli defence ministry identified the commander as Mohammed Said Izadi. He was a longtime target of Israeli intelligence who oversaw Iran’s ties to groups like Hamas, which led the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza, according to the military.
Izadi was one of the few people who knew in advance about Hamas’s plan to launch the surprise attack, The New York Times reported last year.
Israeli officials said Izadi led the Palestinian affairs branch in the Quds Force, the arm of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps responsible for foreign operations. Israel said it had struck an apartment where Izadi was staying in central Iran overnight between Friday and Saturday.
Iran has long backed a network of proxy militias across West Asia in an attempt to extend its power and influence across the region and menace its enemy, Israel. They include Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
In 2019, the US imposed sanctions on Izadi, saying he had provided millions of dollars to Hamas. Britain did the same four years later to counter what it called “unprecedented threats from the Iranian regime”.
The Times reported that in August 2023, Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza, said in a closed-door meeting of the group’s leadership that he had spoken to Izadi the previous month to outline its plan to launch a huge assault on Israel, according to internal minutes of the group’s leadership meetings.
After the war in Gaza began, Izadi remained in direct contact with Hamas’s top leadership and sought to aid them by transferring equipment and funds into the territory, according to two Israeli defence officials.