Middle East: Haitham Tabatabai, Hezbollah’s highest-ranking military official and one of the group’s founder members, was martyred in an Israeli airstrike on Sunday in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

His targeted assassination marked one of the most significant Israeli violations of the ceasefire with the Lebanese resistance group in the past year, as Washington continues to back Tel Aviv’s widening wars across the region.

Tabatabai, known within the movement as ‘Sayyed Abu Ali’, served as Hezbollah’s chief of staff after the assassination of top-ranking commanders last year and played a key role in its early formation, doctrinal development, and battlefield evolution.

“With pride and honor, Hezbollah announces to the people of the resistance and to our Lebanese people the martyrdom of the great jihadi commander Haitham Ali al-Tabatabai (Sayyed Abu Ali),” read a statement by the Lebanese resistance group.

“He never tired or faltered in defending his land and people,” it added. “Since the inception of the Resistance, he laid the groundwork for a movement that remains strong, dignified, and capable of protecting the homeland and achieving victories.”

The movement denounced Israel’s strike as a “treacherous attack,” condemning the intentional targeting of civilian districts routinely subjected to Israeli bombardment.

The raid – Washington-backed and part of Israel’s broader failed attempts at what it claims was designed to “dismantle” the Axis of Resistance – also martyred four other resistance fighters.

It was reportedly the third known attempt by the Israeli regime to assassinate Tabatabai.

Who was Haitham Tabatabai?

Born in 1968 in Bashoura, a neighborhood in Beirut, Tabatabai grew up in southern Lebanon under the ominous specter of Israeli occupation and joined Hezbollah in the 1980s, soon after its inception.

Over the next four decades, he emerged as a foundational figure, receiving extensive military training, leading various successful operations, and eventually assuming some of the group’s most sensitive leadership responsibilities, according to a biography released by Hezbollah.

As one of the movement’s elite field commanders, Sayyed Abu Ali participated in numerous significant operations, especially elite missions targeting Israeli occupation forces and their collaborators prior to the liberation of South Lebanon in 2000.

He played a key field role in repelling Israeli attacks on Lebanon during the 1993 and 1996 wars.

From 1996 to 2000, he led the Nabatieh Axis and took part in the operation to capture enemy troops in Berkat al-Naqar in the occupied Shebaa Farms, which dealt a severe blow to Israel’s military prestige.

Following the liberation of South Lebanon in 2000, Tabatabai was appointed commander of the Khiam Axis, where he oversaw key defensive and offensive missions during the July 2006 war.

His strategic direction during that war helped the resistance repel Israel’s ground incursions, one of the instances in which Tel Aviv failed to achieve its stated aims despite US political and military backing.

After the 2008 martyrdom of Hezbollah military leader Imad Mughniyeh, Tabatabai was tasked with leading the group’s intervention forces and played a central role in developing the elite Radwan Force.

He later guided operations against Takfiri terrorist groups along Lebanon’s eastern border, bolstering internal security at a time when US regional policies helped fuel extremist militancy.

He was also entrusted with high-level leadership duties across the various fronts of the Axis of Resistance.

Tabatabai’s influence expanded further in 2023 when he directed operational command within Hezbollah during the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Zionist entity.

In 2024, during the Battle of the People of Might, Hezbollah’s response to intensified Israeli aggression, he once again coordinated resistance operations.

Following that war, he assumed full military leadership of the Islamic resistance movement.

Hezbollah emphasized that the martyrdom of Tabatabai would further energize resistance fighters and reinforce their determination to continue resisting the Israeli enemy and its backer, the United States.

“His great martyrdom will bring renewed hope, determination, and strength to his brothers in the resistance, just as he was, in life, a source of power and inspiration for them,” said the group.

Hezbollah vowed to carry forward his legacy and that of all martyred commanders.

Source: Press TV