Hezbollah fighters during the funeral of one of their commanders, Sept. 22, 2024, in the southern suburbs of Beirut. (Credit: AFP)
The Israeli army claims it has dismantled in recent months several military cells in southern Syria, some of them led by Lebanese operatives working on behalf of Unit 840, a covert branch of Iran’s Quds Force, the external operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to reports Friday in The Times of Israel. The Lebanese daily Nidaa al-Watan also reported the claim.
The army said members of these cells, arrested in a series of operations, had been tasked with carrying out attacks against Israel under Unit 840’s direction. It added that in March and April, two field agents of the unit — identified as Zeidan al-Tawil and Mohammad al-Qouryan, but whose nationality was not disclosed — were arrested in Syria.
In recent weeks, other cells run by Salah al-Husseini and Mohammad Sheib — described by Israel as senior IRGC officials killed in Lebanon in July — were also said to have been dismantled. The two were presented as key players in smuggling weapons from Iran to the occupied West Bank, Lebanon and Syria.
Sheib, a Lebanese national, was killed July 11 in a drone strike in the Nabatieh district, while Husseini, also said to be Lebanese, was killed on July 3 in an Israeli strike on the Khaldeh highway at the southern entrance to Beirut. The army described them as among the most important leaders in Iran’s regional weapons network.
“Interrogations conducted after the arrests in Syria showed that some suspects did not know the real identity of their handlers,” the Israeli army claimed. “Their recruitment by Unit 840 was often done in exchange for financial compensation, without disclosing the true objectives of the organization.”
Separately, Syrian authorities announced Thursday that they had dismantled in the Damascus region a “terrorist” cell affiliated with Hezbollah that was planning attacks on Syrian soil. Hezbollah swiftly denied the claim. To note, the party fought for more than 13 years alongside the forces of President Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian civil war and controlled areas along the Syrian-Lebanese border.
After Assad’s fall in December 2024, following a swift rebel offensive led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham — formerly the al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda offshoot — the group’s leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, took power in Damascus. The new president said at the end of August that he had made “concessions regarding the wounds inflicted by Hezbollah” in Syria and did not wish to confront it further.
Since then, Syrian security forces have regularly announced the seizure of weapons “destined for Hezbollah” on Syrian territory. The party’s supply lines from Iran to Lebanon via Assad’s Syria have been cut, further weakening Hezbollah, already severely depleted by its war with Israel between October 2023 and November 2024 and by near-daily Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa. The Lebanese government has also passed a resolution to disarm the group.
Israel continues attacks on southern Lebanon, demolishes buildings in Bint Jbeil