Who is Nasrallah's successor Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s new chief?
71-year-old cleric has often been the public face of the militant group
Dubai: Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, Naim Qassem, who was elected head of the Lebanese armed militant group on Tuesday, has been a senior figure in the Iran-backed Shiite movement for more than 40 years.
Qassem replaces Hassan Nasrallah who was killed in an Israeli strike in Beirut on September 27.
Many other senior Hezbollah officials have also been targeted since Israel turned its focus on the Lebanese group that month.
Israel's Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned Hezbollah's new leader on Tuesday that his appointment was "not for long".
"Temporary appointment. Not for long," Gallant wrote in a post on X alongside a photograph of Qassem, whom Hezbollah had earlier named as assassinated leader Hassan Nasrallah's successor. In a separate post in Hebrew, Gallant wrote that the "countdown has begun".
Often referred to as Hezbollah’s “number two,” the 71-year-old Qassem is one of the religious scholars who founded the group in the early 1980s.
Since Nasrallah’s killing, Qassem has given three televised addresses, including one on October 8, in which he stated that the armed group supported efforts to reach a ceasefire for Lebanon.
Speaking from an undisclosed location on October 8, Qassem described the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel as a “war” about who cries first, asserting that Hezbollah would not cry first.
He claimed the group’s capabilities remained intact despite “painful blows” from Israel. His 30-minute televised address came just days after senior Hezbollah figure Hashem Safieddine was believed to have been the target of an Israeli strike, and 11 days after the killing of Nasrallah.
Safieddine’s killing was confirmed by Hezbollah on October 23.
Began political career with the Amal Movement, a Hezbollah ally.
Left Amal in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which preceded Hezbollah’s formation in 1982.
Appointed deputy secretary-general under Abbas Al Musawi, who was killed by an Israeli attack in 1992.
Continued in the role when Hassan Nasrallah became leader.
Initially, Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Nasrallah, was seen as the successor to Nasrallah.
Safieddine was killed in an Israeli strike shortly after Nasrallah’s assassination.
Public face of the group
Qassem wears a white turban, unlike Nasrallah and Safieddine, who wore black turbans. The cleric, with a gray beard, has often been the public face of the group.
After Nasrallah went underground out of fear of being assassinated by Israel, appearing only in televised speeches, Qassem continued to attend rallies and ceremonies and has sat for interviews with foreign journalists. Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank who researches Hezbollah, noted that Qassem is perceived by many as “more extreme” than Nasrallah, at least in his public statements.
In practice, however, his power within the group was limited under Nasrallah. Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Nasrallah who oversees the group’s political affairs—not Qassem—was generally regarded as the leader’s heir apparent.
Chemistry teacher
Born in 1953 in the town of Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon, Qassem studied chemistry at Lebanese University before working for several years as a chemistry teacher. In the 1970s, he joined the Movement of the Dispossessed, a political organisation founded by Imam Moussa Sadr that pushed for greater representation for Lebanon’s historically overlooked and impoverished Shiite community.
This group morphed into the Amal movement, one of the main armed groups in Lebanon’s civil war, and is now a powerful political party. At the same time, he pursued religious studies and participated in founding the Lebanese Union for Muslim Students, an organisation that aimed to promote religious adherence among students.
His political activism began with the Lebanese Shiite Amal Movement, but he left the group in 1979 in the wake of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, which shaped the political thinking of many young Lebanese Shiite activists.
Qassem took part in meetings that led to the formation of Hezbollah, established with the backing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
Author of a rare book
From 1991, he served as deputy secretary-general of the group, initially under Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Mousawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack in 1992.
Qassem remained in his role when Nasrallah became leader and has long been one of Hezbollah’s leading spokesmen, conducting interviews with foreign media even as cross-border hostilities with Israel intensified over the last year.
In 2005, he wrote a history of Hezbollah that is seen as a rare “insider’s look” into the organisation.
Qassem has been sanctioned by the United States, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group.