Hassan Nasrallah, Iran’s Man Atop Hezbollah, Dead at 64
(Bloomberg) -- Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the most powerful Iranian-backed militant group in the Middle East, was killed by Israeli forces. He was 64.
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Israel’s military said Nasrallah was killed in an air strike on Beirut Friday evening, and Hezbollah confirmed his death a few hours later. Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said that a “precise strike” targeted a command center under residential buildings where Nasrallah was believed to be holed up in the Lebanese capital.
Nasrallah had remained deep in hiding as Israel escalated air strikes on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon in recent weeks. In a show of solidarity with Hamas following that group’s Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, Hezbollah began firing rockets and missiles on a near-daily basis at Israel in a bid to tie down Israeli forces.
In response, Israel in recent weeks escalated its efforts to push back on Hezbollah, killing dozens of the organization’s high-ranking commanders and senior figures, including its military chief, Fuad Shukr. Hours before announcing Nasrallah’s death, Israel said its strikes had killed two top leaders of Hezbollah’s missile unit.
In addition, thousands of rank-and-file Hezbollah members were injured, and dozens killed, when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in September. Israel hasn’t confirmed or denied having sabotaged the devices.
Nasrallah’s death is a devastating blow to Hezbollah — the crown jewel of Iran’s “axis of resistance” in the Middle East — but it could also be a catalyst to an escalation of conflict in the region.
In a taunting speech broadcast on Sept. 19, Nasrallah dared Israel to invade southern Lebanon. “We are waiting for your tanks, and we will see this as a historic opportunity,” he said. He had long said Israel was not a legitimate state and set as his goal its elimination.
Read: Why Hezbollah Is More Worrying to Israel Than Hamas: QuickTake
Schooled in Shiite Islam at seminaries in Iran and Iraq, and known for his fiery speeches and finger-wagging when assailing his enemies, Nasrallah was a divisive figure in Lebanon and the Arab world.
Idolized by many for leading the armed resistance to Israel’s 1982 invasion of southern Lebanon — ultimately forcing the Israeli military to retreat in 2000 — Nasrallah also triggered a month-long war in 2006 with a surprise cross-border raid that killed three Israeli soldiers and captured two others.
“He is the shrewdest leader in the Arab world and the most dangerous,” Israel’s then-ambassador to the US, Daniel Ayalon, told the Washington Post in 2006.
Nasrallah’s image appears on billboards and on gadgets in souvenir shops in Lebanon, Syria and other Middle Eastern countries. His supporters saw him as a religious and political icon, decoding his every move during televised speeches, from the color of his cloak to his smirks and fervent warnings to Israel. There are numerous social media pages dedicated to replaying excerpts of his speeches, interviews and sermons.
State Within a State
Yet he also faced opposition among Lebanese who accused him of tying their country’s fate to Iran, which supplies most of Hezbollah’s funding, training and weaponry. According to that view, Nasrallah oversaw a state within a state, one that weakened Lebanon’s governance and embroiled the country in foreign conflicts.
Shiite Muslims in Lebanon formed what would become Hezbollah — “party of God” — in 1982, in reaction to Israel’s occupation of the country’s south. The movement was inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, a Shiite-majority country. The US considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization.
Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah turned from a resistance group focused on liberating south Lebanon from Israel’s occupation to a political party with a powerful arsenal at its disposal.
Hezbollah members ran for and won seats in parliamentary elections, became ministers in governments and gradually developed a social welfare network that offered members health care, education and financial services.
The number of fighters grew from a couple thousand to an estimated 100,000 as Lebanon’s government offered little to remote regions including parts of the Bekaa Valley and south Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a strong presence.
Paul Salem, vice president for international engagement at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said Nasrallah’s death would be “a major blow to the future of the movement.”
“Since there is no obvious figure to take over immediately with the charisma, Iran would have to do a lot,” Salem said in an interview before Nasrallah’s death was announced.
Regional Influence
Nasrallah was close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and was integral in expanding and deepening Tehran’s network of proxy forces in the region. Hezbollah mended Hamas’ ties with Iran and Syria, and reportedly trained Houthi rebels battling a Saudi-backed government in Yemen who have — also in support of Hamas — disrupted shipping in the Red Sea with missile and drone attacks.
In Israel, Nasrallah was viewed as canny and determined, given his ability to manage the most formidable enemy force while remaining far from public view for the better part of two decades.
His speeches were often monitored and commented on live by Israeli broadcasters, an indicator of the degree to which he was regarded as credible.
Hassan Nasrallah was born on Aug. 31, 1960, the first of nine children in a poor Shiite family from Al-Bazourieh, a village near Tyre in south Lebanon. He was raised in East Beirut, but when a civil war began in 1975, his family moved to south Lebanon, where he finished secondary school.
According to a profile assembled by the Council on Foreign Relations, Nasrallah then went to study in a seminary in Najaf, Iraq, where he met Abbas Musawi, who several years later would become the second secretary general of Hezbollah. The first, Subhi Tufayli, was later ousted and continues to oppose Iran to this day.
Resisted Invasion
Back in Lebanon in 1978, Nasrallah studied and taught at a religious school established by Musawi and won a following for his impassioned sermons. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Nasrallah was among the Shiite leaders who organized armed resistance, their efforts evolving into the creation of Hezbollah.
As Hezbollah’s chief, Musawi designated Nasrallah to represent him at some public ceremonies and speeches. That made Nasrallah the natural successor when, in 1992, Musawi was killed in a missile attack by Israeli helicopters on his motorcade in southern Lebanon.
Nasrallah initially established his political influence through an alliance with another Shiite group lead by House Speaker Nabih Berri. He also signed a strategic partnership in 2006 with popular Christian leader Michel Aoun, who was elected president 10 years later with Hezbollah’s support.
Nasrallah won admirers across the Arab and Islamic world after the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel in which he claimed a “divine victory.”
But things changed in the following decade when Hezbollah fought alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — with Iran and Russia — to crush what was seen by many Arabs as a legitimate uprising against a brutal dictatorship. Nasrallah characterized Assad’s regime, a conduit for Iranian weapons transfers to Hezbollah, as his movement’s “backbone.”
As for the legacy of Nasrallah, the Middle East Institute’s Salem, said it “will be a very negative one in which he dragged the country and his people to historic displacement, death and suffering and defeat.”
--With assistance from Bill Faries.
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