Beirut, Lebanon – The killing of Hezbollah Secretary-Basic Hassan Nasrallah leaves a vacuum inside a motion that has already had much of its leadership decapitated because of months of Israeli assassinations.
However Nasrallah’s death on Friday night, throughout an enormous Israeli assault on southern Beirut, marks the passing of not only a figurehead, however the man who embodied the Lebanese Shia motion within the eyes of its supporters and the broader area.
Nasrallah grew to become secretary-general of Hezbollah in 1992 whereas he was in his 30s, and he led the motion for almost all of its existence. Discovering a alternative of an identical stature will be difficult for Hezbollah, because it appears forward to continued Israeli assaults and even a doable floor invasion of southern Lebanon.
There are, nonetheless, two main figures considered in rivalry to be Nasrallah’s successor: Hashem Safieddine and Naim Qassem. Right here’s what it is advisable to learn about them.
Hashem Safieddine
The top of Hezbollah’s govt council and a cousin of Nasrallah, Safieddine is extensively considered in pole place to develop into the motion’s subsequent secretary-general.
Born in 1964 within the southern village of Deir Qanoun en-Nahr, close to Tyre, Safieddine studied theology along with Nasrallah within the two essential centres of Shia non secular studying, the Iraqi metropolis of Najaf and Qom, in Iran. Each joined Hezbollah within the organisation’s early days.
Safieddine comes from a revered Shia household that has produced non secular students and Lebanese parliamentarians, whereas his brother Abdullah serves as Hezbollah’s consultant to Iran. Safieddine has his personal shut ties to Iran; his son, Redha, is married to the daughter of Qassem Soleimani, the highest Iranian basic killed in a US strike in 2020.
In addition to his position in main the chief council, Safieddine can be an essential member of the group’s Shura Council, and the pinnacle of its Jihadi Council. That significance has made him an enemy to Hezbollah’s international adversaries. America and Saudi Arabia have designated Safieddine a terrorist and frozen his belongings.
Naim Qassem
The 71-year-old is Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, and has usually been known as the motion’s “quantity two”.
He was born within the Nabatieh governorate’s Kfar Kila, a southern Lebanese village that has suffered by way of many Israeli assaults, particularly since final October.
Qassem has a protracted historical past in Shia political activism. Within the Nineteen Seventies, he joined the late Imam Musa al-Sadr’s Motion of the Dispossessed, which finally grew to become a part of the Amal Motion, a Shia group in Lebanon. He later left Amal and went on to assist discovered Hezbollah within the early Eighties, changing into one of many group’s foundational non secular students.
One among Qassem’s non secular mentors was the extensively revered Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, and Qassem himself has taught non secular courses for many years in Beirut.
The secretive nature of a gaggle like Hezbollah means not all his roles within the organisation are public data. At one level, nonetheless, he oversaw a part of Hezbollah’s academic community and has additionally been concerned in overseeing the group’s parliamentary actions.
Qassem was elected deputy secretary-general in 1991, beneath then-Secretary-Basic Abbas al-Musawi, who was additionally assassinated by Israel.
He has performed an essential public-facing position in Hezbollah through the years, and can be a member of the group’s Shura Council.
He famously printed a e book referred to as, Hezbollah, the Story from Inside, in 2005, which was translated into a number of languages.
