The Israel Air Force has killed Mahdi Vafaei, the head of the IRGC Quds Force’s Lebanon Corps engineering branch, in a targeted strike in the Mahallat area of Iran.
Vafaei was a key figure in the establishment of underground networks for Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria, and managed dozens of underground weapons storage projects in Lebanon, according to the IDF’s Wednesday announcement.
Separately, the IDF struck a factory on Tuesday that transferred chemical substances used by the Islamic Republic to develop chemical weapons, the army said.
The factory is owned by the Tofigh Daru Company, a principal supplier of fentanyl to Sepand – the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, Iran’s Defense Ministry’s development agency.
According to the IDF, Tofigh’s factory was disguised as a civilian company.
“The Tofigh Daru Company knowingly and systematically supplied this deadly substance [fentanyl] to the Sepand organization, which used it to conduct research and development of chemical weapons,” said the military.
Fentanyl is an anesthetic that is considered a highly lethal substance when used in high doses.
Substances used for development of chemical weapons
The military said that the strike on the factory “impaired the Iranian terror regime’s chemical weapons production capabilities.”
That chemical factory strike came amid an IDF statement saying that it had nearly completed destroying all of the targets it set out to eliminate.
Among the recent targets were a weapons manufacturing site in Tehran and a uranium enrichment facility in Ardakan.
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.