The Demise of Hezbollah’s Untraceable Ghost

Mustafa Badreddine, a cocky Lebanese bomb maker and one of the architects of Islamic terrorism, was buried Friday. He was Hezbollah’s top military commander, and, along with his brother-in-law Imad Mughniyah, who died in 2008, masterminded one of the longest-running sprees of violence—bombings, hostage-takings, assassinations, and airplane hijackings—in the Middle East. Badreddine, who was fifty-five, was killed in a mysterious explosion in Syria, where he commanded at least six thousand Hezbollah fighters who are propping up the regime of President Bashar Assad. A few months ago, he vowed, “I won’t come back from Syria unless as a martyr or a carrier of the banner of victory.” He came back in a box.