Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon, has chosen Naim Kassem as its new chief.
Bilal Hussein/AP
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Bilal Hussein/AP
BEIRUT — Hezbollah introduced on Tuesday that it has chosen cleric Naim Kassem to steer the Lebanese militant group after the killing of its longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah in an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in late September.
The group stated in an announcement that Hezbollah’s decision-making Shura Council elected Kassem, 71, as its new secretary-general and vowed to proceed Nasrallah’s insurance policies “till victory is achieved.”
Since Nasrallah’s demise as a part of an Israeli offensive that took out a lot of Hezbollah’s senior officers, the white-turbaned cleric with a grey beard has usually been the general public face of the Lebanese militant group. He’s one in every of its founding members however is broadly seen by supporters as missing his predecessor’s oratory abilities.
In a televised speech earlier this month, Kassem, who carries the clerical title of sheikh, claimed Hezbollah’s navy capabilities had been intact after Nasrallah’s assassination and warned Israelis they are going to solely undergo additional as combating continues.
Kassem has been sanctioned by america, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group. His appointment got here as no shock since he had served as Nasrallah’s deputy for 32 years and had additionally lengthy been Hezbollah’s public face, giving interviews to native and international media shops.
“It is a message to Lebanon and overseas that Hezbollah has reorganized itself,” stated Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese analyst near Hezbollah.
Kassem’s appointment exhibits Hezbollah is working its personal affairs and never — as some have reported — that advisers from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard are actually accountable for the group, Qassir added.
In an interview with The Related Press in July, Kassem stated he did not imagine that Israel had the capability — or had but made the choice — to launch a full-blown warfare with Hezbollah. However he warned that even when Israel supposed to undertake a restricted operation in Lebanon that stopped wanting a full-scale warfare, it shouldn’t anticipate the combating to stay restricted.
A day after Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 individuals, principally civilians, and abducting round 250 as hostages, Hezbollah started attacking Israeli navy posts alongside the border with Lebanon, saying it was opening a backup entrance for its Hamas allies.
The assault triggered the yearlong Israel-Hamas warfare and Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, in response to native well being authorities.
“Nobody is aware of the implications of igniting the warfare in Lebanon, regionally and even internationally,” Kassem stated on the time, talking from the group’s political headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
He stated he was happy with Hezbollah’s achievements in its “help entrance” for Hamas, saying it “required sacrifices on our half.”
Lower than three months later, Israel expanded the warfare in Lebanon, leaving a whole bunch lifeless and greater than 1.2 million individuals displaced. The invasion has brought about large destruction in southern and jap Lebanon, in addition to Beirut’s southern suburbs which might be dwelling to Hezbollah’s headquarters. Israeli troops interact in every day fierce clashes with Hezbollah within the border area as they attempt to push deeper into south Lebanon.
Hezbollah remains to be firing dozens of rockets and missiles into northern Israel and in latest days claimed an assault on an Israeli navy base south of Tel Aviv. It additionally claimed duty for a drone assault that hit the house of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month. Nobody was harm in that assault.
Born in 1953 within the city of Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon, Kassem studied chemistry on the Lebanese College earlier than working for a number of years as a chemistry instructor. He concurrently pursued non secular research and took part in founding the Lebanese Union for Muslim College students, a corporation meant to advertise faith.
Within the Nineteen Seventies, he joined the Motion of the Dispossessed, a political group that pushed for better illustration for Lebanon’s traditionally neglected and impoverished Shiite neighborhood.
The group morphed into the Amal motion, one of many principal armed teams in Lebanon’s civil warfare and now a robust political celebration led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Kassem then joined the nascent Hezbollah, shaped with help from Iran after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the nation’s southern area.
From 1991, Kassem served because the group’s deputy, initially underneath Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Mousawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter assault in 1992.
Kassem’s decide to the helm of Hezbollah got here per week after it confirmed that Hashem Safieddine — a high determine who had been broadly anticipated to succeed Nasrallah — was killed in an Israeli airstrike on southern Beirut earlier this month.
Safieddine was Nasrallah’s cousin and had shut hyperlinks to Iran the place he spent years of his life. Safieddine’s son, Rida, is married to Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Power, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in 2020.
“We ask God to assist him within the nice mission in main Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance,” Hezbollah stated in its assertion about Kassem.
In one other blow to Hezbollah, 1000’s of communication gadgets utilized by its members — each fighters and staff with the group’s civilian establishments — exploded near-simultaneously in mid-September, killing 39 individuals and wounding practically 3,000. Israel was blamed for the assault that left scores of others with everlasting disabilities.
Kassem’s decide is “proof that Hezbollah will not be scared relating to the developments,” Qassir additionally stated.