Beirut, Lebanon – The killing of Hezbollah Secretary-Normal Hassan Nasrallah leaves a vacuum within 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, all the way through a immense Israeli assault on southern Beirut, marks the passing of no longer only a figurehead, however the guy who embodied the Lebanese Shia motion within the visions of its supporters and the broader area.
Nasrallah changed into secretary-general of Hezbollah in 1992 week he used to be in his 30s, and he led the motion for almost all of its lifestyles. Discovering a alternative of a matching stature might be tough for Hezbollah, because it seems to be forward to persisted Israeli assaults or even a conceivable grassland invasion of southern Lebanon.
There are, alternatively, two important figures regarded as in rivalry to be Nasrallah’s successor: Hashem Safieddine and Naim Qassem. Right here’s what you want to learn about them.
Hashem Safieddine
The top of Hezbollah’s government council and a cousin of Nasrallah, Safieddine is extensively regarded as in pole place to change into the motion’s nearest secretary-general.
Born in 1964 within the southern village of Deir Qanoun en-Nahr, related Tyre, Safieddine studied theology along side Nasrallah within the two primary centres of Shia non secular studying, the Iraqi town of Najaf and Qom, in Iran. Each joined Hezbollah within the organisation’s early days.
Safieddine comes from a revered Shia crowd that has produced non secular students and Lebanese parliamentarians, week his brother Abdullah serves as Hezbollah’s consultant to Iran. Safieddine has his personal near ties to Iran; his son, Redha, is married to the daughter of Qassem Soleimani, the supremacy Iranian total killed in a US crash in 2020.
In addition to his function in important the manager council, Safieddine could also be an notable member of the crowd’s Shura Council, and the top of its Jihadi Council. That worth has made him an enemy to Hezbollah’s overseas adversaries. The US 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 steadily been known as the motion’s “number two”.
He used to be born within the Nabatieh governorate’s Kfar Kila, a southern Lebanese village that has suffered via many Israeli assaults, particularly since terminating October.
Qassem has a protracted historical past in Shia political activism. Within the Seventies, he joined the overdue Imam Musa al-Sadr’s Motion of the Dispossessed, which ultimately changed into a part of the Amal Motion, a Shia staff in Lebanon. He then left Amal and went directly to backup discovered Hezbollah within the early Nineteen Eighties, turning into one of the most staff’s foundational non secular students.
One among Qassem’s non secular mentors used to be the generally revered Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, and Qassem himself has taught non secular categories for many years in Beirut.
The secretive nature of a bunch like Hezbollah manner no longer all his roles within the organisation are family wisdom. At one level, alternatively, he oversaw a part of Hezbollah’s tutorial community and has additionally been all for overseeing the crowd’s parliamentary actions.
Qassem used to be elected deputy secretary-general in 1991, underneath then-Secretary-Normal Abbas al-Musawi, who used to be additionally assassinated by means of Israel.
He has performed an notable public-facing function in Hezbollah over time, and could also be a member of the crowd’s Shura Council.
He famously printed a keep referred to as, Hezbollah, the Tale from Inside, in 2005, which used to be translated into a number of languages.