Updated Oct. 4, 2024 at 11:10 a.m.*
BEIRUT — His name emerged immediately, and remains atop the list of possible successors. In the aftermath of last Friday’s assassination of longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, it was the late leader’s cousin, Hashem Safieddine, whose profile surfaced as the most likely new No. 1 of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group.
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In an overnight attack in the early hours Friday, Israel reports that Safieddine was the intended target of an airstrike in the southern outskirts of Beirut. It is not yet clear whether he or other top Hezbollah leaders were killed.
Hezbollah has not yet officially announced a new Secretary General, and the party’s Deputy Secretary-General, Sheikh Naim Qassem, in his first appearance after Nasrallah’s assassination, did not specify a clear timeline, he said the matter would be announced in due course.
Nonetheless, Safieddine’s name continues to be the most prominent among potential candidates to succeed Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike south of Beirut.
Who is Safieddine?
Safieddine, 60 was Nasrallah’s younger cousin, on his mother’s side, and bears a strong resemblance to the late leader. They traveled together to Najaf, Iraq, to study religious sciences at the Hawza seminary, and later moved to Iran after the former Iraqi president launched a campaign against Shiite clerics and families in Najaf and Karbala. They completed their religious studies at the Hawza in the holy Iranian city of Qom.
Safieddine remained in Qom for several years until Nasrallah called him back to Lebanon to join Hezbollah.
Safieddine advanced through the ranks within Hezbollah’s organizational structure and is now the head of the Executive Council, one of the nine members of the Shura Council, the military commander in southern Lebanon, and a member of the Jihad Council.
The Jihad Council consists of founding military figures of Hezbollah, a small group that formed the core of Hezbollah in the early 1980s. Despite its name, suggesting it is just a military wing, it also has organizational responsibilities, such as oversight, coordination, and managing relationships between the party’s various councils and its religious, social, and service institutions.
The council leaders are responsible for organizing the party’s civil institutions, especially those involved in “jihad” activities, such as the “Martyrs Foundation,” the “Wounded Foundation,” “Student Mobilization,” and “Jihad al-Bina.”
Role in civil affairs and resistance leadership
Safieddine is the most active member of the Jihad Council in both political and civil affairs, unlike other members whose activities are limited to the military side, such as Fouad, Shukr, Ibrahim Aqil, and Wissam Tawil, who have all been assassinated by Israel over the past year.
Safieddine is also a social figure. He heads several non-profit civil associations that provide services to those in need, most notably the “Safieddine Family Association in Lebanon,” which plays a social role in the southern suburbs and the south.
Born in 1964 in the town of Deir Qanoun al-Nahr in the Tyre district in southern Lebanon, Safieddine is married to Raeda Faqih, the daughter of Shiite scholar Youssef Faqih, who died in a car accident in Abidjan.
Safieddine’s arrival would be a result of both his brother’s relationships and his own organizational rise.
In 2020, his eldest son, Reza Safieddine, married Zeinab Soleimani, the youngest daughter of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who was assassinated by the United States in 2020 in a missile strike near Baghdad airport shortly after his arrival from a secret visit to Beirut.
Family ties, political alliances
Zeinab was granted Lebanese citizenship by a special decree from Lebanon’s then-President Michel Aoun. She speaks Arabic fluently and with a Lebanese accent, while Reza holds a senior leadership position in the Revolutionary Guard, appearing more Iranian than Lebanese.
When Safieddine moved to Iran, his brother Abdullah Safieddine also moved there and has remained ever since, allowing him to establish deep, strong ties with the early leaders of the regime. He has become akin to Hezbollah’s permanent ambassador to Tehran. Thus, Hashem Safieddine’s succession to Nasrallah appears to be a result of both his brother’s relationships and his own organizational rise.
This is the third time he’s been publicly suggested as Nasrallah’s successor.
Additionally, Safieddine’s son Reza’s marriage to Zeinab Soleimani has further boosted his candidacy as Nasrallah’s successor. Some even believe that this alliance solidified his position even before Nasrallah’s assassination, allowing Safieddine to bypass internal party protocols and edge out Sheikh Naim Qassem from consideration.
This is the third time Hashem Safieddine has been publicly suggested as Nasrallah’s successor. The first was in the mid-1990s after his permanent return from Iran, and the second during the COVID-19 crisis when Nasrallah contracted the virus, sparking rumors about his possible death.
Previous successions
After Hezbollah announced the assassination of Nasrallah, preparations began for a second announcement, where the party will decide on Nasrallah’s successor.
Hezbollah typically does not hesitate to appoint a replacement for the Secretary-General and has gone through several such transitions. The first was after the rebellion of its first Secretary-General, Sheikh Subhi al-Tufayli, who led the “Revolution of the Hungry” in the Bekaa Valley, protesting the southern Lebanese monopolization of leadership positions within the party and marginalizing the Bekaa region, despite its foundational role in Hezbollah’s early days. The northern Bekaa, a Shiite-majority region, hosted Hezbollah’s first training camp established by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and many people from the Bekaa joined the party.
Al-Tufayli was removed, and Sayyed Abbas al-Moussawi was smoothly appointed in his place without any obstacles. What helped stabilize the situation was that the leadership remained in the Bekaa. In 1992, al-Moussawi was assassinated in an airstrike targeting his convoy in southern Lebanon, along with his wife and son.
Arms, drug trafficking
After al-Moussawi’s assassination, leadership transitioned smoothly to Nasrallah, despite rumors at the time that the Iranian patronage was divided over whether it was suitable to hand leadership to a civilian figure. Ultimately, the hardline religious faction backed by the Revolutionary Guard decided in favor of Nasrallah.
The U.S. has classified Safieddine as a terrorist
The leadership at the top of Hezbollah had consisted of three figures: the former SecretaryGeneral Hassan Nasrallah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, one of the founders of the “Union of Muslim Students” in Lebanon and the former Deputy Secretary-General, and Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, head of the Executive Council and supervisor of the party’s cultural, social, and educational activities (student mobilization).
The United States has classified Safieddine as a terrorist, accusing him of involvement in drug trafficking in coordination with factions linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as well as overseeing arms and explosives smuggling operations.
Originally published Oct. 1, 2024, the piece was updated Oct. 4, 2024 with news that Israel has tried to kill Safieddine in an overnight air strike.
