Who is Hashem Safieddine, the potential new leader of Hezbollah?

BEIRUT

As Hezbollah confirmed the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah during Israeli airstrikes on the outskirts of Beirut, speculation about a potential successor intensified.

According to sources, Hashem Safieddine will most likely replace Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for 32 years until his death on Friday.

Safieddine, Nasrallah’s cousin, is head of Hezbollah’s executive council and was widely considered his heir apparent.

Born in 1964 in the city of Deir Qanoun En Nahr in the Tire District of southern Lebanon, the black turban-wearing cleric has been part of Hezbollah’s structures since its founding in 1982.

In the 1980s, Safieddine traveled to Qom, Iran, to join Nasrallah and study religious sciences. He had been groomed to succeed Nasrallah since 1994, when he was summoned from Qom to Beirut to head the executive council and oversee the group’s political affairs.

For thirty years, he dealt with many sensitive matters on a daily basis within the group, from managing its institutions to overseeing its finances and investments both at home and abroad.

Public and political presence

Like Nasrallah, Safieddine is known for his public and political presence, as well as his fiery and eloquent speeches.

In his speeches, he emphasized his commitment to confronting and responding to Israeli “aggression.”

In a speech delivered on July 13, he said: “If our duty, as it is today, is to stay in the south (of Lebanon) to fight this enemy and offer up our martyrs, we are ready to sacrifice everything, confident that Allah will grant us victory as he did it in 2006.”

In another speech the same month, he emphasized that “Lebanon is concerned about war against the Israeli enemy without limits or borders.”

Like Nasrallah, Safieddine has often said that Hezbollah will not stop supporting the Gaza front until Israel ends its offensive that has killed more than 41,000 people since October last year.

Close relations with Iran

Safieddine has good relations with Tehran. In addition to spending years studying religious sciences in Qom, he is related to former Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani – in 2020, his son Reza married Zeynep, the daughter of the deceased officer.

In 2017, the U.S. Treasury added Safieddine to its anti-terrorism blacklist.

* Text: Rania Abu Shamala

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