Shayetet 13 invaded Naqoura, Lebanon, from the sea on Tuesday, and the Israel Navy said on Thursday that the raid was the first such operation in Lebanon since 2000. The disclosure came as the navy laid out how its special forces have been pushed into riskier missions behind enemy lines since the October 7 massacre.
The navy said one of those missions sent five Shayetet 13 naval commandos thousands of kilometers from Israel with no support and no immediate rescue plan if something went wrong. It also said it sent Shayetet 13 to another part of the world where the unit had never operated before, a sign of how far the mission set has expanded beyond the coastal raids for which the commando unit is best known.
The figures the navy released were meant to show scale as much as intent. In recent years, it said, joint work with the Mossad has reached new levels, while the Naval Intelligence Division was directly involved in the killing of Iranian Navy commander Alireza Tangsiri and helped facilitate IAF strikes against Iranian naval cruise missiles and sites tied to submarines and other underwater threats. The navy also said it fired 14 missiles in the March 8 attack at the Ramada Hotel in Beirut, where it said five senior IRGC Quds Force liaison officials with Hezbollah were killed.
That attack, the navy said, targeted men it described as top commanders in Quds Force-Hezbollah intelligence and terrorist financing, with links to Palestinian terrorist groups in Lebanon. The IDF said the financing official had been the key actor in transferring $770 million from Iran to Hezbollah over the past year, a sum that underlines why the killing landed as more than another strike in a widening war.
The same pattern carried into the campaign against Hamas. On November 19, the navy worked with the IDF Intelligence Corps to assassinate Hamas naval commander Abdullah Abu Samael after Hamas significantly violated the ceasefire, and on March 16 the Shin Bet, the navy and the IDF Intelligence Corps jointly killed Yunas Mahmoud Hasin Elian, whom the navy described as a top Hamas naval commander.
What makes the Naqoura raid stand out is not only that it reached Lebanese territory from the sea, but that it fits a broader shift Israel says it has embraced since Oct. 7: forward-leaning defense, deeper intelligence coordination and more aggressive special operations wherever commanders think the threat can be struck first. The Mossad has long been the main Israeli service for tracking and killing senior Iranian officials; the navy says it is now playing a larger role in that same shadow war.
The unanswered question is how far that model can be pushed before the risks catch up with it. Shayetet 13 is now being used not just for sea raids, but for missions that stretch across borders and continents, and the navy has made clear it intends to keep using the unit that way.
