After emerging unscathed from the strike that killed the supreme leader, rumours that Esmail Qaani is an Israeli spy grow.

Gen Esmail Qaani has gained a reputation over the last two years of surviving attacks ‘while everyone around him dies’

The fate of one of Iran’s most powerful military figures remains unknown after he became the focus of rumours that he was an Israeli spy.

Gen Esmail Qaani, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is said to have aroused suspicion after emerging unscathed from the air strike at the start of the war that killed Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader, as well as numerous top aides.

Speculation is rife in the Middle East that he is under house arrest or has been executed.

As head of the Quds Force, one of the five branches of the IRGC, the 68-year-old has been responsible for exporting Iranian terror by training and equipping Islamic revolutionary groups outside Iran since 2020.

He replaced Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated on Donald Trump’s orders in the last month of his first term in office.

In the past week, articles have pointed to an alleged trend of Gen Qaani escaping incidents that have killed others.

One said the general had “spent the past two years accumulating a reputation for his extraordinary ability to walk away unscathed while everyone around him dies”.

One of the incidents involved the wholesale targeting of IRGC top brass in Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June, when he was initially thought to have been killed, but then emerged at a public event wearing civilian clothes and a baseball cap. This echoed a similar sequence of events in October 2024.

Heightening the gossip were reports that Israel had published a list of Iranian and Iran-linked officials it wanted to eliminate in the current round of fighting. Over the weekend that marked the start of the war, that list was declared “complete”, but Gen Qaani’s name was not included.

A Persian-language account on X, which is believed to be run by Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, took the step of denying that Gen Qaani was one of its spies last year.

Since the strike that killed Khamenei nine days ago, numerous social media accounts of dubious provenance have alleged that Gen Qaani was a long-term Israeli asset, some of which have superimposed his head on an IDF uniform.

There are also reports that Gen Qaani is being interrogated by the IRGC’s internal security service.

In a war that figures in the US such as Pete Hegseth seem determined to portray as an action movie, this story bears the genuine hallmarks of an espionage thriller.

One Israeli source with a background in intelligence said: “Ultimately, no one knows.

“Perhaps the truth is that he is what he claims to be, loyal to the Iranian regime, and all this chatter is part of an operation to undermine him and the work he does attacking Israel.”

The speculation takes place against the backdrop of what appears to be a stunning Israeli penetration of Iran’s security state.

Some indication has emerged of how they pulled off the assassination of Khamenei, including by hacking the feed from Tehran’s traffic cameras.

The Mossad was also said to be operating on the ground during the war in June to help take out anti-aircraft defences.

It is not known whether any Israeli agents have been inside Iran in the build-up to the current conflict.

However, former operatives have previously said that the Mossad is now able to extract a large amount of data from Iran digitally, including by persuading Iranians to pass it on to them, unaware that they are dealing with Israeli intelligence.

Gen Qaani is reportedly viewed as a less visionary and transformational figure than Soleimani within IRGC circles.

However, the Iran-Iraq war veteran was seen as loyal to the regime by bringing decades of experience to his role exporting terror to the region.