Beirut, Lebanon – The killing of Hezbollah Secretary-Normal Hassan Nasrallah leaves a vacuum inside a motion that has already had a lot of its management decapitated because of months of Israeli assassinations.
However Nasrallah’s demise on Friday night, throughout a large 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 probably be troublesome for Hezbollah, because it appears to be like forward to continued Israeli assaults and even a potential floor invasion of southern Lebanon.
There are, nevertheless, two main figures regarded as in rivalry to be Nasrallah’s successor: Hashem Safieddine and Naim Qassem. Right here’s what it’s worthwhile to find out about them.
Hashem Safieddine
The top of Hezbollah’s government council and a cousin of Nasrallah, Safieddine is broadly regarded as 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 important centres of Shia spiritual 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 spiritual 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 normal killed in a US strike in 2020.
In addition to his position in main the manager council, Safieddine can be an vital member of the group’s Shura Council, and the top of its Jihadi Council. That significance has made him an enemy to Hezbollah’s overseas adversaries. The USA and Saudi Arabia have designated Safieddine a terrorist and frozen his property.
Naim Qassem
The 71-year-old is Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, and has typically been known as the motion’s “number two”.
He was born within the Nabatieh governorate’s Kfar Kila, a southern Lebanese village that has suffered by means of many Israeli assaults, particularly since final October.
Qassem has an extended historical past in Shia political activism. Within the Nineteen Seventies, he joined the late Imam Musa al-Sadr’s Motion of the Dispossessed, which ultimately 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, turning into one of many group’s foundational spiritual students.
Considered one of Qassem’s spiritual mentors was the broadly revered Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, and Qassem himself has taught spiritual lessons for many years in Beirut.
The secretive nature of a bunch like Hezbollah means not all his roles within the organisation are public information. At one level, nevertheless, 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, underneath then-Secretary-Normal Abbas al-Musawi, who was additionally assassinated by Israel.
He has performed an vital public-facing position in Hezbollah through the years, and can be a member of the group’s Shura Council.
He famously printed a ebook referred to as, Hezbollah, the Story from Inside, in 2005, which was translated into a number of languages.
