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The Israeli Air Force "eliminated" Hassan Khalil Yassin, a senior official within Hezbollah's intelligence array, in a strike in the Dahieh area of Beirut, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Saturday.
"Yassin stood at the head of a department responsible for the identification of civilian and military targets, on the northern border and deep within Israeli territory," the statement added.
"As part of his role, Yassin collaborated intensely with all of Hezbollah's offensive units, was personally involved in the planning of terror attacks that were executed during the war against Israeli civilians and soldiers, and planned additional attacks to be carried out in the coming days," the IDF said.
Elon Musk has praised as "hall-of-famer" a community note added to a tweet posted by the X account of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The account had called Hezbollah the "victor", but a community note provided context that "the entire Hezbollah leadership including Nasrallah has been eliminated" in an Israeli air strike.
This is not the first Khamenei tweet being corrected today. Another post on Khamenei's X account said a few hours ago that "the Zionist criminals need to know that they're far too weak to be able to inflict any significant damage on the solid structure of Hezbollah."
A community note was later added to his post which reminds him: "In fact, the "Zionists" referred to here (Israel) just destroyed the Hezbollah HQ and wiped out its entire leadership."
"The ruthless supporters of the Zionists, led by the American regime, are complicit in all the bloodshed... through their comprehensive support, unlimited arming, and backing of these international criminals," Iran's Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in his message on Nasrallah's death.
Nabil Qaouk, a deputy leader of Hezbollah's executive council, was the target of the latest Israeli air strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, Al-Arabiya reported, citing sources.
The Israeli military announced earlier today it had conducted a precise strike in the Dahieh area of Beirut, saying it will provide more details later.
Iran's Parliament has blocked the resignation of a lawmaker set to join Masoud Pezeshkian’s cabinet as deputy, sparking speculation over whether Pezeshkian will fight to keep the Sunni lawmaker in his ranks.
Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh would have been the first Sunni cabinet member in the history of the Shia-majority Islamic Republic if the hardline-dominated parliament had let him leave.
Iran's Sunnis say they have been systematically blocked in the past forty-five years from holding higher government positions due to their religion.
Hosseinzadeh submitted his resignation to the Parliament on September 25 while Pezeshkian was in New York to attend the UN General Assembly. The resignation was put to vote on the same day. 129 of the 247 lawmakers present at the session, voted against the resignation, and five abstained.
This was the first time the Parliament ever objected to a resignation for joining the government.
In an interview with CNN’s Christine Amanpour Thursday before leaving New York, Mohammad-Javad Zarif, Pezeshkian’s Strategic Affairs Deputy, referred to the appointment of a Sunni, and four women, to the cabinet as one of the biggest achievements of the Pezeshkian administration. However, Zarif did not mention Parliament’s vote.
In a meeting with expatriate Iranians in New York on Thursday Pezeshkian also said the appointment of two Sunni Kurds, one as a deputy and the other as a province governor, was an unprecedented initiative his government had taken but made no reference to the Parliament’s objection.
“The issue surrounding Abdolkarim Hosseinzadeh’s role in the cabinet is expected to be resolved upon the President’s return to Tehran, following his remarks to expats in New York, where he emphasized that Hosseinzadeh is viewed as a deputy president,” the conservative Tabnak news website reported Thursday.
Lawmakers opposing the resignation did not raise Hosseinzadeh’s religion during the debate, instead arguing that their decision was aimed at ensuring his constituents wouldn’t lose their representative.
Pezeshkian appointed the reformist Hosseinzadeh who has three times been elected to the Parliament from a predominantly Sunni, Kurdish constituency in West Azarbaijan Province as his Rural Development, Deprived Areas, and Nomads deputy in late August.
Some lawmakers and activists have criticized the Parliament’s decision and even urged Hosseinzadeh to submit another resignation letter or suggested that Pezeshkian appoint another Sunni lawmaker in his place.
In his Friday sermon in Zahedan, capital of the province of Sistan-Baluchestan, Mowlavi Abdolhamid, a leading Sunni cleric, criticized the Parliament’s objection to Hosseinzadeh’s resignation and barring his way to entering Pezeshkian’s cabinet although resignation of other lawmakers to join the cabinet had always been accepted before.
Abdolhamid who wields much influence among the large Sunni, Baluchi population of the province and other Sunni-populated regions has repeatedly criticized the government for discrimination against Sunnis.
Ali-Akbar Ranjbarzadeh, a member of the Parliament’s presiding board, pointed out in an interview with the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA) Friday that in similar circumstances three years ago, the Parliament had accepted the resignation of hardliner Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh-Hashemi when Ebrahim Raisi appointed him as his deputy.
“The Parliament was subservient to the administration during Raisi's time. Were you worrying about people’s votes? No! Your problem is something else!” journalist Mohammad-Hassan Najmi protested in a tweet while reminding that not one but three lawmakers were allowed to join Raisi’s cabinet.
“Not to accept [the resignation] of a Sunni person was not decent ... After all, he represented hope to the Sunni population and could bear a very positive message to them,” he said.
The parliament's opposition conveys to the Iranian Sunni community that they will continue to be blocked from higher management positions and impede Pezeshkian from carrying out his campaign promises of creating a “national unity” government, the reformist Ham-Mihan newspaper wrote Thursday.
Reformist lawyer and activist Minoo Khaleghi and some others have argued that based on an interpretation of the Constitution by the Guardian Council in 1981, which has not been annulled in later years, acceptance of a government position by a lawmaker can automatically be considered as resignation and no official resignation is required.
