Who was Hashem Safieddine, once seen as the future Hezbollah leader?

Hashem Safieddine, whose killing was confirmed by Hezbollah today, briefly helped run Lebanon’s strongest military and political force as the presumed successor to its slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, until he, too, was assassinated by Israel.

His death marked Israel’s latest heavy blow to Hezbollah, an organisation facing its biggest crisis since it was created in 1982 to fight the Israeli occupation.

A relative of Nasrallah, Safieddine ran the movement alongside its Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem since Nasrallah’s assassination by Israel in an air strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on 27 September.

A Lebanese security source said on 5 October that Safieddine had been out of contact since the day before, after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on 3 October that Axios cited three Israeli officials as saying was aimed at Safieddine.

Safieddine sat on the group’s Jihad Council – the body responsible for its military operations. He also headed its executive council, overseeing financial and administrative affairs for the group.

While not as well-known to Israelis as Nasrallah, Safieddine was seen by Israel as a leading target and a proxy for arch-foe Iran.

Safieddine assumed a prominent role speaking for Hezbollah during the past year of hostilities with Israel, addressing funerals and other events that Nasrallah had long avoided for security reasons.

He was the first Hezbollah official to speak in public after the 7 October 2023 infiltration into Israel by Palestinian resistance factions, including Hamas.

READ: Nasrallah relative Hashem Safieddine seen as future Hezbollah leader

With observers across the Middle East waiting to see what Hezbollah might do to help Hamas, Safieddine told a rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs the following day that the group’s “guns and our rockets are with you”.

“Everything we have is with you,” Safieddine declared.

Like Nasrallah, Safieddine wore the black turban denoting his status as a sayyed, or descendent of the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him).

He hailed from a prominent Lebanese Shia family, and was born in the country’s predominantly Shia south.

Safieddine studied at religious seminaries in the Iranian city of Qom before returning to Lebanon in the 1990s to assume leadership responsibilities in the group.

His son, Rida, is married to the daughter of the late Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force until he was killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

His brother, Abdullah, serves as Hezbollah’s representative in Tehran.

READ: Israel confirms killing of Nasrallah’s heir apparent, Hashem Safieddine

As executive council chief, Safieddine played a role some likened to that of prime minister of a government, responsible for an array of Hezbollah institutions involved in health care, education, culture and construction, along with other activities.

He led efforts to rebuild the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut after Israel’s 2006 war on the group, when swathes of the area were flattened by Israeli air strikes. In a 2012 speech, Safieddine said the post-war reconstruction had amounted to “a new victory” over Israel.

The US State Department declared him a specially designated global terrorist in 2017. In response to US pressure on Hezbollah that same year, he said “this mentally impeded, crazy US administration headed by Trump will not be able to harm the resistance”.