Hashem Safieddine: potential next Hezbollah leader ‘even more hardline’

When Israel assassinated Abbas al-Musawi in 1992, there were celebrations at the demise of the Hezbollah leader whose militants had harried Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. His successor, Hassan Nasrallah, propelled the group to new and more dangerous heights. With Nasrallah now dead, his possible replacement, Hashem Safieddine, may hope to do the same.

Born in 1964 in southern Lebanon, Safieddine, with his black turban and grey beard, bears a resemblance to Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday. He is said to hold even more hardline views than Nasrallah. Safieddine is also designated as a terrorist by the United States, which blacklisted him in 2017.

Some weeks ago, Safieddine had issued a stark warning to Israel: “Prepare to cry and wail.”

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It is now Hezbollah’s followers, however, who are in mourning. Unlike Musawi, Nasrallah may simply be irreplaceable, having developed his predecessor’s band of militiamen into a regional force that compelled Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000 and then fought it to a stalemate six years later. All the while, he extended its reach as a Lebanese political power that paralleled the state and army, providing social services and ultimately holding veto power on who led the country.

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Safieddine will struggle to improve on that, but he may not have to. With Hezbollah’s leadership all but wiped out, along with a substantial portion of its arsenal, by Israeli airstrikes, his main task will be survival — both his, and Hezbollah’s.

“In our resistance … when any leader is martyred, another takes up the flag and goes on with new, certain, strong determination,” he said in a foreboding speech in July, at the funeral of a killed militant.

 

 

In an interview years ago, Nasrallah had been asked what his greatest wish would be. He demurred, saying his answer might sound contrived, but it would be to die fighting. While that ending may have been taken for granted by any Hezbollah leader, Safieddine’s priority will be to avoid it, or at least postpone it for as long as he can.

Like Nasrallah he studied religion and Iran, and had been primed to lead Hezbollah one day, and enjoys close and familial ties with the Iranian regime. His son is married to the daughter of Qasem Soleimani, the former Iranian military chief who helped to build up Iran’s network of militia in the region and who was killed in a US drone strike in 2020.

Safieddine’s brother is Hezbollah’s representative in Iran. A picture this week showed the sibling sitting alongside Soleimani’s successor, Esmail Qaani, both looking despondent.

He has led Hezbollah’s executive council for more than two decades, overseeing its day-to-day operations which include operating as a political party and running social services and fundraising activities such as narcotics smuggling.

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Safieddine also has Nasrallah’s credentials: he has religious training and is a claimed descendant of the prophet Mohammed. He is also one of a handful of clerics who sit on Hezbollah’s shura council, a prerequisite for leading Hezbollah.

If he does take the leadership he will preside over a very different organisation, and one whose future will be uncertain. Hezbollah had expanded itself into a regional and domestic power, tied by the constraints of Lebanon’s fractious sectarian politics.

Its Lebanese rivals have been muted in their responses in recent weeks, and some have even come out in support of Hezbollah after Nasrallah’s death, conscious that the Israeli airstrikes have displaced tens of thousands of Lebanese and killed more than 800 people this month. But once the dust settles, Hezbollah, with Safieddine possibly at its head, will have to deftly navigate regional politics.