Hezbollah picks Naim Kassem to lead Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon: NPR

BEIRUT – Hezbollah announced Tuesday that it has chosen cleric Naim Kassem to lead the organization Lebanese militant group after the assassination of its old leader Hassan Nasrallah during an Israeli airstrike on a Beirut suburb in late September.

The group said in a statement that Hezbollah’s decision-making Shura Council has chosen 71-year-old Kassem as its new secretary general and pledged to continue Nasrallah’s policies “until victory is achieved.”

Since Nasrallah’s death as part of an Israeli offensive that took out many senior Hezbollah officials, the white-turbaned, gray-bearded cleric has often been the public face of the Lebanese militant group. He is a founding member, but is widely seen by supporters as lacking the eloquence of his predecessor.

In a televised speech earlier this month, Kassem, who holds the administrative title of sheikh, claimed that Hezbollah’s military capabilities were intact. after Nasrallah murder and warned Israelis that they will only suffer further as the fighting continues.

Kassem has been sanctioned by the United States, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group. His appointment came as no surprise as he had served as 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 Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah.

Kassem’s appointment shows that Hezbollah is running its own affairs and not, as some have reported, that advisors from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards are now in charge of the group, Qassir added.

In an interview with The Associated Press in July, Kassem said he did not believe Israel had the ability — or had yet made the decision — to start an outright war with Hezbollah. But he warned that even if Israel planned to conduct a limited operation in Lebanon that would not lead to full-scale war, the country should not expect fighting to be limited.

A day after Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 250 people as hostages, Hezbollah began attacking Israeli military posts along the border with Lebanon, saying it was was opening backup. front for his Hamas allies.

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

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

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

Less than three months later, Israel expanded the war in Lebanon, killing hundreds and displacing more than 1.2 million people. The invasion has caused widespread destruction in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah’s headquarters are located. Israeli forces are involved in fierce clashes with Hezbollah in the border area on a daily basis as they try to push deeper into southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah continues to fire dozens of rockets into northern Israel and in recent days claimed an attack on an Israeli military base south of Tel Aviv. It also claimed responsibility for a drone strike that hit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home earlier this month. No one was injured in that attack.

Born in 1953 in the town of Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon, Kassem studied chemistry at the Lebanese University before working as a chemistry teacher for several years. At the same time, he pursued religious studies and participated in the founding of the Lebanese Union for Muslim Students, an organization designed to promote religion.

In the 1970s, he joined the Movement of the Dispossessed, a political organization pushing for greater representation of Lebanon’s historically overlooked and impoverished Shia community.

The group morphed into the Amal Movement, one of the main armed groups in Lebanon’s civil war and now a powerful political party led by parliament speaker Nabih Berri. Kassem then joined the emerging Hezbollah, formed with support from Iran after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the country’s southern region.

From 1991, Kassem served as the group’s deputy, initially under Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Mousawi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in 1992.

Kassem’s choice to take the helm of Hezbollah came a week after it confirmed that Hashem Safieddine – a top figure who was widely expected to succeed Nasrallah – was killed in an Israeli airstrike on South Beirut earlier this month.

Safieddine was Nasrallah’s cousin and had close ties to Iran, where he spent years of his life. Safieddine’s son, Rida, is married to Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of General Qassem Soleimani, 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 the great mission of leading Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance,” Hezbollah said in its statement about Kassem.

In a further blow to Hezbollah, in mid-September thousands of communications equipment used by its members – both fighters and workers from the group’s civilian institutions – exploded almost simultaneously, killing 39 people and injuring nearly 3,000. Israel was blamed for the attack, which left dozens of others with permanent disabilities.

Kassem’s choice is “proof that Hezbollah is not afraid of the developments,” Qassir also said.