The head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps on Tuesday claimed that Israeli aircraft targeted him and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Eurasia Diary reports citing to Times of Israel.

Qassem Soleimani made the comments during his first major interview, a lengthy one-on-one that was screened on Iranian television.

Soleimani described his role in overseeing fighting against Israel, from Beirut, during the Second Lebanon War thirteen years ago, and specified that he reported to Tehran on a daily basis and was in constant contact with Khamenei.

Soleimani said he spent almost the entire duration of the 34-day conflict in Lebanon, which he entered from Syria alongside Imad Mughniyeh, a commander of the Iran-backed Shiite movement Hezbollah who was assassinated in 2008.

“Israeli spy planes were constantly flying overhead” in the Dahiyeh neighborhood of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold, Soleimani said.

Soleimani said he and Mughniyeh  — who was assassinated in an operation ascribed to Israel and the CIA — felt they needed to evacuate Nasrallah from the operations room.

He said they took Nasrallah to a second building, and shortly after they got there, two Israeli bombardments hit nearby.

“We were feeling that these two bombings were about to be followed by a third one … so we decided to get out of that building. We didn’t have a car, and there was complete silence, just the Israeli regime aircraft flying over Dahiyeh,” he recounted.

He said he and Nasrallah tried to hide from what he described as heat-tracking drones under a tree while they waited for Mughniyeh to find a car, but the car was also being tracked by a drone, so they used underground garages to switch cars and lose Israel’s tail.

According to his account, after ferrying Nasrallah to safety, he and Mughniyeh returned to the command center.