Hezbollah, seeking stability, names new leader after Nasrallah’s killing

BEIRUT - Hezbollah on Tuesday announced it had chosen Naim Qassem, a longtime deputy to slain leader Hasan Nasrallah, to lead the Lebanese militant and political movement as it reels from a punishing Israeli military offensive that has eviscerated the group’s senior ranks.

Qassem, a 71-year-old Shiite Muslim cleric, was elected to the post of secretary general by the Shura Council, the group’s decision-making body, Hezbollah said in a statement.

A well-known figure in the group who often sat for media interviews and authored books about Hezbollah, Qassem also served as the movement’s public face after Nasrallah’s killing, delivering several televised speeches in which he tried to reassure its supporters that Hezbollah’s military capabilities remained intact and that the group was prepared for a “long” battle with Israel.

“We are able to continue for days, weeks and months,” Qassem said in a televised speech Wednesday, flanked by the Lebanese flag, the yellow banner of Hezbollah and a portrait of Nasrallah. “Leave our land to limit your losses.”

Nasrallah, who led Hezbollah for more than three decades, was killed on Sept. 27 in an Israeli strike that flattened residential buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs. Another leading candidate to replace Nasrallah, Hashem Safieddine, was also killed in an Israeli strike this month.

In a social media post Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant appeared to threaten Qassem with assassination as well. “Temporary appointment. Not for long,” he wrote, along with a picture of the newly appointed leader.

Despite its setbacks, Hezbollah has continued to launch rocket, missile and drone attacks against Israel, and has put up a formidable fight against Israeli ground forces. Last week, the militant group damaged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea in a drone attack and said a “new escalatory phase” was coming.

Qassem was born in 1953 in Beirut to a family that hailed from Kfar Fila, in southern Lebanon, according to a biography on his website. He studied chemistry at Lebanese University and taught high school chemistry, including at a public school east of Beirut.

Naim Halawi, a Lebanese comedian and former student of Qassem’s at the school, called him “soft-spoken and methodical.”

Qassem was also a founder of the Lebanese Union of Muslim Students and began his political career with Amal, a Shiite political movement, in the mid-1970s. After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, he played an integral role in the formation of Hezbollah, founded in the wake of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, with funding and guidance from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Qassem was appointed deputy secretary general of Hezbollah in 1991 by Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack the next year. He continued to serve in the role when Nasrallah assumed leadership of the party, and his duties, including as a member of the Shura Council, included monitoring Hezbollah’s parliamentary activities.

In 2018, under the Trump administration, Qassem was placed under sanctions by the Treasury Department along with other members of the Shura Council for “acting for or on behalf of Hezbollah,” which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States.

Despite his years of service and his senior position, he was “not supposed to be Nasrallah’s successor,” said Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, who said Qassem had no military role in Hezbollah. His appointment, he added, might indicate that the group “understands it now has to make a shift” away from its military activities toward solidifying its role as a political party, as calls from some quarters in Lebanon for the group’s disarmament grow louder in the wake of a war that has devastated swaths of the country.

In his speeches after Nasrallah’s death, Qassem voiced support for cease-fire negotiations pursued by Lebanon’s parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally. Qassem did not explicitly tie the outcome of those negotiations to a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as Nasrallah had before he was killed.

Qassem’s appointment gave interlocutors “a clear point of contact for negotiations” and signaled that Hezbollah, after a series of withering blows, was beginning to “reestablish itself,” said a person close to the group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on Hezbollah’s behalf.

But he is no replacement for Nasrallah, whose “charisma and the affection he inspired” in supporters were “unparalleled,” the person said.

“What is undeniable is the necessity for a political leader during this period, which may help mitigate the confusion and chaos that have recently enveloped the party,” the person said.

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Bisset reported from London and Fahim from Istanbul.