The ruling council of Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist organization announced on Sunday that Hashem Safieddine, cousin of slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, has been chosen to replace him as secretary-general.
Nasrallah, 64, was killed on Saturday by a precision airstrike targeting his bunker in the southern suburbs of Beirut. He was a founding member of Hezbollah in 1982, taking command of the organization after his predecessor Sayyed Abbas Musawi was killed by an Israeli helicopter raid in 1992.
Nasrallah has been credited with building up Hezbollah’s terrorism capabilities and using them aggressively throughout his reign, which was certainly not a happy achievement for the people of either Lebanon or Israel, but from Hezbollah’s perspective it makes him difficult to replace. The elimination of the seemingly untouchable Nasrallah probably also reduced the number of eager applicants for his job.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to Nasrallah’s irreplaceable skill set when he said on Saturday: “As long as Nasrallah lives, he would quickly restore the capabilities we took away from Hezbollah.”
Safieddine has a few important bullet points on his resume, beginning with the fact that he was one of the few high-ranking Hezbollah leaders who has not been liquidated by Israel over the past week.
His familial connection and strong physical resemblance to Nasrallah are assets, and so is his tight connection to Hezbollah’s paymasters in Iran, by virtue of his son being married to the daughter of Tehran’s late terror master, Qassem Soleimani. Also, Safieddine’s brother Abdullah is Hezbollah’s “ambassador” to Iran.
Safieddine has comparable Islamist credentials to Nasrallah, having studied alongside him at the Muslim religious schools in the Shiite holy cities of Qom and Najaf in Iran and Iraq, respectively. He currently leads Hezbollah’s executive council and also its “Jihad Council,” which Nasrallah established in the 1990s to coordinate attacks on Israel. He was designated a terrorist by the U.S. government in May 2017.
Safieddine’s chief potential rival for secretary-general is Naim Qassem, Nasrallah’s deputy, who automatically assumed leadership duties on an interim basis until the ruling Shura Council of Hezbollah can designate a new secretary-general.
Qassem, 71, also has solid credentials in both religious scholarship and political activism. He was one of the original Hezbollah religious scholars when the group was founded, having jumped ship from an older Shiite activist group in Lebanon called the Amal Movement. The Amal Movement is still around, still militant, and theoretically comparable to Hezbollah in political power, but it doesn’t have Iranian money and muscle behind it.
Qassem has been Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general for even longer than Nasrallah held the top spot. Hezbollah sources willing to speak to foreign media all seem to think Safieddine is more likely to take the top spot, because he has better Islamic religious credentials and Nasrallah was grooming him for leadership. Safieddine would provide a better sense of continuity than Qassem, which is important if Hezbollah wants to project the idea that killing Nasrallah inflicted no grievous permanent damage on the organization.
“In our resistance … when any leader is martyred, another takes up the flag and goes on with new, certain, strong determination,” Safieddine himself boasted in July.
Hezbollah is reportedly putting off the confirmation of a new secretary-general until after Nasrallah can receive a proper funeral, which might be tricky given Israel’s demonstrated ability to pick off Hezbollah big shots.
“If you are inheriting something that has just been gutted, you are going to have to do things differently to put things back on track. Hezbollah will reconstitute, but the longer Israel keeps the pressure on, the harder it will be to do that,” national security professor Afshon Ostovar of the Naval Postgraduate School in California told the Washington Post on Saturday.