Hezbollah selects Naim Qassem to lead Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon – NPR

BEIRUT — Hezbollah announced Tuesday it has selected cleric Naim Kassem to lead the organization. Lebanese Battle Group after the assassination of its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah during an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in late September.

The group said in a statement that Hezbollah’s leadership council had chosen Qassem, 71, as its new secretary-general and vowed to continue Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”

Since Nasrallah’s death in an Israeli offensive that killed many senior Hezbollah officials, the white-turbaned and gray-bearded cleric has often become the public face of the Lebanese militant group. He is one of its founders, but many supporters believe he lacks the oratorical skills of his predecessor.

In a televised address earlier this month, Qassem, who bears the ecclesiastical title of sheikh, said Hezbollah’s military capabilities were intact. after Nasrallah killing and warned the Israelis that they would only suffer further as the fighting continued.

Qassem has been sanctioned by the US, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group. His appointment came as no surprise, as he had been Nasrallah’s deputy for 32 years and had also long been the public face of Hezbollah, giving interviews to local and foreign media.

“This is a message to Lebanon and abroad that Hezbollah has reorganized itself,” said Qasim Kassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah.

Kassem’s appointment shows that Hezbollah is running its own affairs and not – as some have reported – that the group is now led by advisers from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Kassir added.

In a July interview with The Associated Press, Kassem said he does not believe Israel is capable of (or has already decided to) start a full-scale war with Hezbollah. But he warned that even if Israel intended to carry out a limited operation in Lebanon that would not lead to full-scale war, it should not expect fighting to remain limited.

The day after Hamas-led militants swept into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 250 as hostages, Hezbollah began attacking Israeli military posts along the border with Lebanon , announcing that he was opening reserve forces. front for its Hamas allies.

The attack sparked a year-long war between Israel and Hamas, and Israel’s retaliatory offensive in the Gaza Strip has left more than 43,000 Palestinians dead, according to local health authorities.

“No one knows the consequences of fueling war in Lebanon at the regional and even international level,” Kassem said at the time, speaking from the group’s political headquarters in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

He said he was proud of Hezbollah’s achievements in its “support front” for Hamas, saying it “requires sacrifice on our part.”

Less than three months later, Israel expanded the war into Lebanon, leaving hundreds dead and more than 1.2 million refugees. The invasion caused widespread destruction in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah is headquartered. Israeli troops are engaged in violent daily clashes with Hezbollah in the border region as they try to push deeper into southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah continues to fire dozens of rockets into northern Israel and in recent days said it was attacking an Israeli military base south of Tel Aviv. He also claimed responsibility for the drone attack on the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month. No one was injured as a result of the attack.

Kassem was born in 1953 in the city of Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon. He studied chemistry at the Lebanese University and then worked as a chemistry teacher for several years. He simultaneously studied religious studies and participated in the founding of the Lebanese Union of Muslim Students, an organization dedicated to promoting the religion.

In the 1970s, he joined the Dispossessed Movement, a political organization that sought greater representation for Lebanon’s historically ignored and impoverished Shiite community.

The group has evolved into the Amal Movement, one of the main armed factions in the Lebanese civil war and now a powerful political party led by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Qassem then joined the nascent Hezbollah, formed with Iranian support after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the country’s southern region.

Since 1991, Qassem served as deputy to the group originally led by Nasrallah’s predecessor Abbas Mousavi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack in 1992.

The selection of Qassem to lead Hezbollah comes a week after it was confirmed that Hashem Safiddin – a top figure widely expected to succeed Nasrallah – was killed in an Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut earlier this month.

Safiddin was Nasrallah’s cousin and had close ties to Iran, where he spent years of his life. Safieddin Reed’s son is married to Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of General Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force who was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq in 2020.

“We ask God to help him in his great mission of leading Hezbollah and the Islamic resistance,” Hezbollah said in a statement about Qassem.

In another blow to Hezbollah, the near-simultaneous explosions in mid-September of thousands of communications devices used by its members, both militants and employees of the group’s civilian institutions, left 39 people dead and nearly 3,000 wounded. Israel was blamed for the attack, which left dozens of other people disabled.

The selection of Qassem is “proof that Hezbollah is not afraid of developments,” Kassir also said.