Nasrallah was Hezbollah’s leader given that 1992. His killing leaves a significant space in the group’s management that will be hard to fill.
Beirut, Lebanon– The killing of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah leaves a vacuum inside a motion that has actually currently had much of its management beheaded as an outcome of months of Israeli assassinations.
Nasrallah’s death on Friday night, throughout an enormous Israeli attack on southern Beirut, marks the death of not simply a token, however the male who embodied the Lebanese Shia motion in the eyes of its fans and the broader area.
Nasrallah ended up being secretary-general of Hezbollah in 1992 while he remained in his 30s, and he led the motion for most of its presence. Discovering a replacement of a comparable stature will be hard for Hezbollah, as it expects continued Israeli attacks and even a possible ground intrusion of southern Lebanon.
There are, nevertheless, 2 leading figures believed to remain in contention to be Nasrallah’s follower: Hashem Safieddine and Naim Qassem. Here’s what you require to understand about them.
Hashem Safieddine
The head of Hezbollah’s executive council and a cousin of Nasrallah, Safieddine is extensively believed to remain in lead to end up being the motion’s next secretary-general.
Born in 1964 in the southern town of Deir Qanoun en-Nahr, near Tyre, Safieddine studied faith together with Nasrallah in the 2 primary centres of Shia spiritual knowing, the Iraqi city of Najaf and Qom, in Iran. Both signed up with Hezbollah in the organisation’s early days.
Safieddine originates from a reputable Shia household that has actually produced spiritual scholars and Lebanese parliamentarians, while his sibling Abdullah acts as Hezbollah’s agent to Iran. Safieddine has his own close ties to Iran; his kid, Redha, is wed to the child of Qassem Soleimani, the leading Iranian basic eliminated in a United States strike in 2020.
As his function in leading the executive council, Safieddine is likewise a crucial member of the group’s Shura Council, and the head of its Jihadi Council. That significance has actually made him an opponent to Hezbollah’s foreign enemies. The United States and Saudi Arabia have actually designated Safieddine a terrorist and frozen his possessions.
Naim Qassem
The 71-year-old is Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, and has actually frequently been described as the motion’s “second”.
He was born in the Nabatieh governorate’s Kfar Kila, a southern Lebanese town that has actually suffered through lots of Israeli attacks, particularly considering that last October.
Qassem has a long history in Shia political advocacy. In the 1970s, he signed up with the late Imam Musa al-Sadr’s Movement of the Dispossessed, which ultimately entered into the Amal Movement, a Shia group in Lebanon. He later on left Amal and went on to assist discovered Hezbollah in the early 1980s, turning into one of the group’s fundamental spiritual scholars.
Among Qassem’s spiritual coaches was the extensively reputable Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, and Qassem himself has actually taught spiritual classes for years in Beirut.
The deceptive nature of a group like Hezbollah suggests not all his functions in the organisation are public understanding. At one point, nevertheless, he supervised part of Hezbollah’s academic network and has actually likewise been associated with managing the group’s parliamentary activities.
Qassem was chosen deputy secretary-general in 1991, under then-Secretary-General Abbas al-Musawi, who was likewise assassinated by Israel.
He has actually played an essential public-facing function in Hezbollah for many years, and is likewise a member of the group’s Shura Council.
He notoriously released a book called, Hezbollah, the Story from Within, in 2005, which was equated into numerous languages.