Lebanese authorities have arrested a man closely connected to Hezbollah on suspicion of spying for Israel, with a judicial official telling AFP that the intelligence he provided helped lead to the assassination of four senior security commanders in the terror group.
The suspect was detained last week at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport moments before he was set to board a flight to Iraq, according to the judicial official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The arrest represents one of the most damaging breaches Hezbollah has suffered from within its own ranks in recent years.
According to the official, the detainee is a resident of southern Lebanon who is married to an Iraqi woman and had made frequent trips to Iraq, ostensibly to see her family. Investigators believe those trips actually served as a cover. From Iraq, the official said, the man would travel on to Turkey, where he met with officers linked to Mossad and handed over information about targets he had been tracking in Beirut.
The official described him as someone who was "very close to commanders in Hezbollah" and had access to a wide range of sensitive information because of those relationships. That access reportedly allowed him to gather details ranging from the personal movements of Hezbollah leaders to logistical data and strategic targets across the organization.
Asharq Al-Awsat reported that the intelligence he passed along is believed to have helped Israel identify targets in strikes that killed four senior Hezbollah security officials during 2024, including Fuad Shukr, who was killed in an airstrike on Beirut's southern suburbs that August, and Ibrahim Aqil, killed the following month. The Lebanese military judiciary has now taken over the case after an initial investigation by the Internal Security Forces' Information Branch.
The arrest fits a broader pattern. Lebanese security services have detained dozens of people in recent years on suspicion of working for Israeli intelligence, with many recruited online amid the economic collapse that has gripped the country since 2019. A judicial source told AFP in October that more than thirty people had been arrested on suspicion of feeding Israel precise information on Hezbollah facilities and troop movements during the group's earlier rounds of conflict with Israel in 2023 and 2024.
The case adds to a string of Israeli intelligence successes against Hezbollah in recent months and offers fresh evidence of Mossad's deep penetration into the organization, even as Lebanese officials now try to determine whether the suspect had additional accomplices inside Hezbollah and how he managed to operate undetected for as long as he did.
