Who was Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader killed by an Israeli airstrike? – National
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallahwhose death was announced Saturday, led the Lebanese group through decades of conflict with Israeloverseeing its transformation into a military force with regional influence and becoming one of the most important Arab figures in generations – with the support of Iran.
Hezbollah said in a statement that Nasrallah had been killedbut it was not said how. The Israeli military earlier said it killed Nasrallah on Friday in an airstrike on the group’s central headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
Nasrallah’s death is a blow to the group. Among his supporters, he will be remembered for standing up to Israel and defying the United States. To his enemies, he was the leader of a terrorist organization and a proxy for Iran’s Shiite Islamist theocracy in its struggle for influence in the Middle East.
Its regional influence was on display during nearly a year of conflict sparked by the Gaza War, as Hezbollah entered the fray by firing on Israel from southern Lebanon in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, and Yemeni and Iraqi groups followed suit, operating under the aegis of Hamas. of “The Axis of Resistance”.
“We are facing a great battle,” Nasrallah said in an Aug. 1 speech at the funeral of Hezbollah’s top military commander. Fuad Shukr, killed in an Israeli strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah.
A televised speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is broadcast on big screens as fighters and mourners attend the funeral ceremony of slain commander-in-chief Fuad Shukr, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, August 1, 2024 On August 1, Hezbollah mourned Shukr, whose body was found at the scene. rubble from a July 30 Israeli strike in south Beirut that also killed five civilians, three women and two children, and injured dozens, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, amid fears of conflict wider in the region were increasing.
Khaled Desouki / AFP via Getty Images
Yet when thousands of Hezbollah members were injured and dozens more killed, when their communications devices exploded During an apparent Israeli attack last week, that battle began to turn against his group.
In response to attacks on Hezbollah’s communications network, in a speech on September 19, Nasrallah pledged to punish Israel.
“It is an assessment that will come, its nature, its size, how and where? This is certainly what we will keep to ourselves and in the narrowest circle, even within ourselves,” he said.
Since then, he has not given a broadcast speech.
Meanwhile, Israel has significantly intensified its attacks, killing several senior Hezbollah commanders in targeted strikes and unleashing a massive bombardment in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon that killed hundreds.
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Recognized even by his enemies as a talented orator, Nasrallah’s speeches were followed by friends and enemies alike.
Wearing the black turban of a sayyed, or descendant of the prophet Mohammed, Nasrallah used his speeches to rally Hezbollah’s base but also to issue carefully calibrated threats, often wagging his finger.
He became secretary general of Hezbollah in 1992, at just 35 years old, the public face of a once-obscure group founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982 to fight Israeli occupation forces.
Israel killed his predecessor, Sayyed Abbas al-Musawi, in a helicopter attack. Nasrallah led Hezbollah when his guerrillas finally drove Israeli forces out of southern Lebanon in 2000, ending 18 years of occupation.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, speaks to the media August 1, 1993 in the southern suburbs of Beirut. Nasrallah was elected secretary-general of Hezbollah in 1992 after Israel killed his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi, his wife and three-year-old daughter in an airstrike.
Joseph Barrack/AFP via Getty Images
“Divine Victory”
The conflict with Israel has largely defined his leadership. He declared “Divine Victory” in 2006 after Hezbollah waged 34 days of war against Israel, earning the respect of many ordinary Arabs who had grown up watching Israel defeat its armies.
But he became an increasingly controversial figure in Lebanon and the wider Arab world as Hezbollah’s area of operations expanded into Syria and beyond, reflecting the intensifying conflict between Shiite Iran and the Sunni Arab monarchies allied with the United States in the Gulf.
While Nasrallah has described Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria – where it fought alongside President Bashar al-Assad during the civil war – as a campaign against jihadists, critics have accused the group of being part of a conflict regional sectarian.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (center) hosts a reception in honor of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left) in the presence of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (right) February 25, 2010 in Damascus, Syria.
Jordan Pix/Getty Images
Domestically, Nasrallah’s critics said Hezbollah’s regional adventurism was imposing an unbearable price on Lebanon, leading once-friendly Gulf Arabs to flee the country – a factor that contributed to its Financial collapse of 2019.
In the years following the 2006 war, Nasrallah walked a tightrope in the face of renewed conflict with Israel, accumulating Iranian rockets in a carefully measured competition of threat and counterthreat.
The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, sparked the worst conflict between Hezbollah and Israel since 2006, costing the group hundreds of fighters, including senior commanders.
After years of conflict elsewhere, the conflict has returned the focus to Hezbollah’s historic struggle against Israel.
“We are paying the price here for our support for Gaza and the Palestinian people, as well as for our adherence to the Palestinian cause,” Nasrallah said in his August 1 speech.
Nasrallah grew up in the poor Karantina neighborhood of Beirut. His family is from Bazouriyeh, a village in predominantly Shiite southern Lebanon that today constitutes the political heart of Hezbollah.
He was part of a generation of young Lebanese Shiites whose political outlook was shaped by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Before leading the group, he spent nights with frontline guerrillas fighting the Israeli occupation army. His teenage son, Hadi, died in combat in 1997, a loss that gave him legitimacy with his core Shiite constituency in Lebanon.
An undated photo shows Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (right) with his 18-year-old son Hadi, killed during clashes with Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon September 12, 1997. An Israeli soldier was killed on September 18, 1997, as well as three others. injured during a series of coordinated attacks carried out by Hezbollah guerrillas against Israeli positions in southern Lebanon.
AFP via Getty Images
Powerful enemies
He had a habit of threatening powerful enemies.
As regional tensions escalated after the outbreak of war in Gaza, Nasrallah issued a thinly veiled warning to US warships in the Mediterranean, telling them: “We have prepared for the fleets with which you threaten us “.
In 2020, Nasrallah promised that US soldiers would leave the region in coffins after Iranian General Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq.
He has expressed fierce opposition to Saudi Arabia over its armed intervention in Yemen, where, with support from the United States and other allies, Riyadh has sought to roll back the Iran-aligned Houthis.
As regional tensions rose in 2019 following an attack on Saudi oil facilities, he said Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates should end the war in Yemen to protect themselves.
“Don’t bet on a war with Iran because they will destroy you,” he said in a message to Riyadh.
Under Nasrallah’s watch, Hezbollah also clashed with its adversaries in Lebanon.
In 2008, he accused the Lebanese government – supported at the time by the West and Saudi Arabia – of declaring war by banning his group’s internal communications network. Nasrallah vowed to “cut off the hand” that tried to dismantle him.
That sparked four days of civil war pitting Hezbollah against Sunni and Druze fighters, and the Shiite group took control of half of the capital Beirut.
He has strongly denied any involvement by Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, after a UN-backed tribunal indicted four members of the group.
Nasrallah dismissed the court – which ultimately convicted three of them in absentia in 2020 for the assassination – as a tool in the hands of Hezbollah’s enemies.
