Senior Iranian intelligence official Muhammad Riza Zahdi, aka Hassan Mahdawi has been named to replace slain arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh as Hizbullah's chief military commander, according to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera. Zahdi served in the Iranian Embassy in Beirut in the late 1980s.
Zahdi will reportedly be in charge of coordinating weapons smuggling to Hizbullah from Syria as well as the construction of military positions in southern Lebanon. The paper said that the appointment was part of an Iranian plan to restructure Hizbullah in the wake of the Second Lebanon War.