In 2009, Hejazi became the deputy chief of the General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces for Readiness, Logistics, and Industrial Research, a position he seems to have held until 2014. Pro- regime outlets state that during the six year gap from 2014 until his current appointment as deputy Quds Force commander Hejazi, “was given battlefield responsibilities on one of the Resistance Axis fronts.”
It is likely that this “Resistance Axis front” was Lebanon. On August 29, 2019, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) purported to expose “the identities of three senior officers in Iran’s [IRGC] involved in Hezbollah’s attempt to develop and acquire precision guided missiles in Lebanon.” The IDF specifically named “Muhammad Hussein-Zada Hejazi” as one of those IRGC officers, describing him as the “commander of Iran’s precision guided missile project in Lebanon,” and stating that he “directly commands Iranian personnel stationed in Lebanon.”
However, it’s unclear how much progress the regime has made on its precision guided missile (PGM) project. As late as March 1, 2020 IDF International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said that, “while Hezbollah possesses a massive arsenal of regular rockets…it has yet to achieve the capability to mass produce these PGMs.” While Conricus alleged that Hezbollah is “close” to achieving that goal, in August 2019, he also stated that “according to our assessments, Hezbollah does not yet have an industrial capability to manufacture precision-guided munitions — not for lack of trying,” noting that the group did not possess “significant amounts” of PGMs in its arsenal.
Conricus’ statements echoed an earlier assessment by Maj. Gen. Tamir Hyman, the Chief of the IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman). On December 11, 2018 Maj. Gen. Hyman told a session of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that despite Hezbollah developing its missile capabilities it did not “possess the industrial capability to convert and produce precision weapons.”