Who was Hassan Nasrallah? The killer cleric who came to believe his own publicity

The Party of God, or Hezbollah in Arabic, are the victors, says the Quran. The verse refers to Muslims who believed in God and their Prophet Muhammad, but for the followers of Hezbollah it seemed like an apt name for the militia that forced Israel to end its occupation of Lebanon in 2000, then fought the region’s mightiest army to a standstill six years later.

To its many detractors, though, the militia was the A Team of terrorism: an Iran-trained and armed group that killed more Americans — 241 — in a single day on October 23, 1983, than any other group before or after the September 11 2001 attacks by Al-Qaeda, and which went on to bomb a synagogue in Argentina in 1994, killing dozens.

Hezbollah’s supporters and enemies credited, or blamed, one man with turning a ragtag militia conceived in the early 1980s into the world’s most formidable non-state fighting force: Hassan Nasrallah. He was born in Beirut in 1960, the son of a vegetable seller, and took up religion at an early age. By the time he joined the Amal party, then the dominant Shia force and militia in Lebanon, he already showed political promise. He went on to join the nascent Hezbollah in the early 1980s before leaving to further his religious studies in an Iranian seminary. He returned to Lebanon in 1991. A year later he took over Hezbollah.

Nasrallah expanded Hezbollah’s influence while drawing ever closer to Tehran, eventually being seen as on a par with any of the Islamic regime’s top military commanders. Hezbollah became Iran’s most valuable client and ally, a trump card against Israel.

In Lebanon’s fractious and sectarian politics, he developed Hezbollah into a state within a state, rivalling the government and overshadowing its weak, British-trained military. Hezbollah held sway in the mostly Shia south, running its militia alongside hospitals, schools and other social services.

But it was the end of the Israeli occupation in 2000 that catapulted the group to regional popularity. Six years later it fought the Israelis to a standstill in a 34-day war.

Israel, unaccustomed to an indecisive war against its enemies, began planning for a next round that was 18 years in the making until last week, ending with a huge airstrike on Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut that killed Nasrallah and his top aides.

It was not only Israelis who cheered his death: President Biden described it as a “measure of justice”. The US, Britain, Canada and several other countries had designated Hezbollah as a terrorist group for activities dating back to the Marine barracks bombing and kidnappings and murders of Americans in the 1980s to the 1994 Buenos Aires synagogue bombing that killed 85 people.

Hezbollah also had its share of detractors and opponents in Lebanon and the Arab world. It is designated as a terrorist group by the Gulf states, who view it as Iran’s most dangerous weapon. In rebel-held areas of Syria, there were celebrations when people learnt of his death.

His most likely successor is Hashem Safieddine, as long as he survives the Israeli campaign. He is Nasrallah’s cousin and head of the group’s executive council and is believed to be alive but will be lying low. The US had listed him as a terrorist in 2017. Another is Hezbollah’s deputy commander, Naim Qassem, a cleric born in 1953. He warned Israel a few weeks ago that it would face huge losses if it went to war.

That same hubris had killed Nasrallah. Earlier this month he assured the Lebanese in a taped speech from an undisclosed location that Israel would not dare to go to war following ten months of rocket attacks by Hezbollah that emptied out parts of northern Israel. Hezbollah had grown too powerful, with an arsenal of more than 150,000 rockets that could reach any part of Israel. “What we’ve done today, yesterday, the day before yesterday, and over ten months: if Netanyahu had wanted to go to war with Lebanon he would have done so.”

How the IDF targeted Nasrallah

Israel’s assassination of Hassan Nasrallah along with much of Hezbollah’s command was Iran’s biggest setback in decades of building an alliance of militias across the region. Tehran has threatened retaliation but its leaders are unlikely to risk their own skins.

Hezbollah is more than another Iranian-backed militia. For Tehran, it was the ultimate deterrent against Israel in the event of a war. Iran helped Hezbollah to amass a huge arsenal of rockets, in effect a gun to Israel’s head should it consider bombing Iranian nuclear facilities.

The point of groups such as Hezbollah is that they should go to war for Iran, not the other way round. With Nasrallah’s assassination on Friday, which capped a fortnight in which Israel wiped out a significant portion of those rockets along with most of Hezbollah’s command, Iran has seen its deterrence collapse along with its standing in the region.

Hezbollah’s followers would have noted that at no point recently did Iran signal that it would intervene. Hamas in Gaza had high hopes for Hezbollah and Iran. Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel but Iran did not move.

Iran had threatened to attack Israel after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s leader, in Tehran in July, then suggested that it put off a reprisal to give truce talks in Gaza a chance. When they fell apart it went silent on the matter. The only time it has attacked Israel was in April, when it sent in a wave of painfully telegraphed rockets and drones after an airstrike levelled its consulate in Damascus.

“Right now they don’t want to poke the bear,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East programme at the Chatham House think tank in London, said.