Beirut, Lebanon – The assassination of Hezbollah Secretary Common Hassan Nasrallah leaves a void inside a motion that has already seen a lot of its leaders beheaded because of months of Israeli assassinations.
However Nasrallah’s demise on Friday afternoon, throughout an enormous Israeli assault in southern Beirut, marks the passing not solely of a figurehead, however of the person who embodied the Lebanese Shiite motion within the eyes of its supporters and the area generally.
Nasrallah grew to become secretary basic of Hezbollah in 1992, when he was about 30, and led the motion for many of its existence. Discovering a substitute of comparable stature shall be tough for Hezbollah because it expects continued Israeli assaults and even a attainable floor invasion of southern Lebanon.
Nonetheless, two distinguished figures are believed to be vying to be Nasrallah’s successor: Hashem Safieddine and Naim Qassem. Here is what that you must learn about them.
Hashem Safieddine
Safieddine, head of Hezbollah’s government council and Nasrallah’s cousin, is believed to be in prime place to turn out to be the motion’s subsequent secretary-general.
Born in 1964 within the southern village of Deir Qanoun en-Nahr, close to Tyre, Safieddine studied theology alongside Nasrallah within the two foremost facilities of Shiite non secular studying, the Iraqi metropolis of Najaf and Qom, Iran. Each joined Hezbollah within the group’s early days.
Safieddine comes from a revered Shiite household that has produced Lebanese non secular students and parliamentarians, whereas his brother Abdullah serves as Hezbollah’s consultant in 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.
Along with his position as chief of the chief council, Safieddine can be an vital member of the group’s Shura Council and the pinnacle of its Jihadist Council. That significance has made him an enemy to Hezbollah’s international adversaries. The US and Saudi Arabia have designated Safieddine a terrorist and frozen his property.
Naim Qassem
The 71-year-old is Hezbollah’s deputy secretary basic and has usually been referred to as the motion’s “quantity two.”
He was born in Kfar Kila, within the Nabatieh governorate, a village in southern Lebanon that has suffered many Israeli assaults, particularly since final October.
Qassem has a protracted historical past of Shiite political activism. Within the 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 Shiite group in Lebanon. He later left Amal and helped discovered Hezbollah within the early Eighties, turning into one of many group’s founding non secular students.
Certainly one of Qassem’s non secular mentors was the extremely revered Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, and Qassem himself has taught faith courses for many years in Beirut.
The secretive nature of a bunch like Hezbollah signifies that not all of its roles within the group are public information. Nonetheless, at one level he oversaw a part of Hezbollah’s academic community and was additionally concerned in overseeing the group’s parliamentary actions.
Qassem was elected deputy secretary-general in 1991, underneath then-secretary-general Abbas al-Musawi, who was additionally assassinated by Israel.
He has performed an vital public position in Hezbollah over time and can be a member of the group’s Shura Council.
In 2005 he printed a e book titled Hezbollah, the story from inside, which was translated into a number of languages.
