The Israeli Air Force’s targeted-killings team is pulling back the curtain on the Beirut airstrike that eliminated Hezbollah’s military chief Haytham Ali Tabatabai, describing a lightning-fast chain of approvals and a “zero-mistake” mission built around a pinpoint, two-floor hit in the heart of the terror group’s stronghold.
According to Israeli reports, the operation began with a rare intelligence break that placed Tabatabai in a specific apartment inside a crowded residential block in Beirut’s Dahiya district, long used as Hezbollah’s power base. Within a very short window, the information moved from intel units to the IAF’s targeted-killings cell, up through senior commanders and Israel’s political echelon, clearing the way for an immediate strike on one of Iran’s most important terror lieutenants in Lebanon.
Tabatabai, a U.S-designated terrorist, was Hezbollah’s chief of staff and one of its most experienced battlefield commanders. Since the 1980s he had helped build and command the Radwan Force, Hezbollah’s elite assault unit, and later ran the group’s external operations arm, directing terror activity and training in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and beyond.
Advanced USAF stealth fighter.
Captured on March 31, 2019.
Location is the Melbourne Air and Space Show, Melbourne, Florida.
The IAF strike slammed into a building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing Tabatabai and four other Hezbollah operatives and injuring more than two dozen people, according to Lebanese authorities. It was one of the deepest Israeli strikes into the Lebanese capital since the current conflict began and shattered Hezbollah’s assumption that its top brass could hide safely in densely populated civilian neighborhoods.
An IAF combat pilot from the targeted-killings team told Israeli media that the mission was planned as a surgical two-floor strike: munitions were guided to destroy the exact levels where Tabatabai and his entourage were believed to be, while leaving much of the rest of the building standing. For the air crews, the instruction was simple but unforgiving — no mistakes on target, timing or identification, despite the urban clutter and the political stakes.
Israeli officials say Tabatabai had effectively rebuilt Hezbollah’s war machine after the previous Lebanon war and the earlier elimination of senior figure Hashem Safieddine, coordinating force buildup, border assaults and the terror group’s attempts to re-entrench along Israel’s northern frontier. Removing him, they argue, tears a crucial layer out of Hezbollah’s command structure just as it was trying to restore its offensive punch.
It was not Israel’s first attempt on his life. Tabatabai is believed to have survived at least two earlier assassination efforts during the previous year of heavy fighting, underscoring how valuable he was to Tehran’s regional project and why the IAF was willing to take the risk of a deep strike into Beirut to finally get him.
The hit landed against the backdrop of a fragile ceasefire along the Israel–Lebanon border, meant to freeze the front after a brutal year of war. Hezbollah and its backers immediately cried foul, framing the assassination as a violation. Israel counters that a U.S-sanctioned terror commander rebuilding an Iranian proxy army is a legitimate military target wherever he sleeps, ceasefire or not.
On the Israeli side, the defense establishment has already been war-gaming the fallout. In the days surrounding the strike, the IDF wrapped up its “Magen Oz” General Staff drill and raised alert levels on the Lebanese front, testing both defensive and offensive responses in case Hezbollah chooses to escalate. The message from Jerusalem is that the air force can reach any Hezbollah commander, and that the north is being hardened for whatever comes next.
For Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons, the loss of Haytham Ali Tabatabai is more than a headline. It is proof that even under ceasefire terms, Israel’s targeted-killing machine is very much alive — and that the terror group’s most guarded safe houses in Beirut have become part of the battlefield.
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