Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an attack this Friday (27) against the terrorist group’s headquarters in Beirut. The information was confirmed by Israel, the country responsible for the bombing, and the Lebanese militia, this Saturday (28).
Nasrallah, who considered Israel his greatest enemy, managed to avoid his death amid clashes with the country during the more than 30 years he led the Lebanese Shiite group. His absence, as of now, places Hezbollah’s future in an unpredictable scenario.
Nasrallah took over the reins of the Shiite group in 1992, after his predecessor, Abbas al Musawi, was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack in southern Lebanon. He was always fully aware that, as Hezbollah’s top leader, he was a declared enemy of Israel. For this reason, since 2006, he lived in secret locations.
His public appearance has been rare since taking office, last seen in person 12 years ago. In the context of the growing conflict, his appearances were only televised from unknown locations.
“I haven’t used cell phones or landlines for years for security reasons, and even if I wanted to, they wouldn’t allow me,” he said in May during his mother’s funeral, in which he participated via a recorded message.
Nasrallah was born in 1960 into a modest family in the eastern suburbs of Beirut and from school demonstrated great religious fervor and political interests.
A follower of Imam Musa Sadr, a leader of the Lebanese Shiite community who later disappeared under mysterious circumstances, he joined the Shiite political movement Amal when he was a teenager and participated in some of its protests.
When he was almost of age, Nasrallah traveled to the Iraqi city of Najaf, the cradle of Shiite theological thought, where he was taught by some of the clerics who accompanied Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Islamic Revolution in Iran. Upon returning to Lebanon, he studied under the supervision of his predecessor at the head of Hezbollah, Abbas al Musawi.
In 1982, he was one of the creators of the clandestine terrorist group, and from the beginning he was part of its governing body, the Council of Seven.
Nasrallah stood out as one of the leaders of the reformist movement, which sought to incorporate the clandestine group into Lebanese political life. His ascendancy was such that he was named general secretary of the group just hours after Israel killed his predecessor. At the time, Nasrallah was 32 years old.
From this, in the last decades of conflict with Israel, he actively participated in the transformation of the militia into a military force with regional influence, which made Hezbollah’s number 1 one of the most prominent Arab figures in generations, with support from Iran.
At the same time, his positions have made him increasingly controversial in Lebanon, the terrorist group’s country of origin, and in the Arab world in general. This is because, as Hezbollah’s influence expanded into Syria and other countries in the region that form the Axis of Resistance, a climate of tension also increased proportionally between Iran’s allies and the Sunni Arab monarchies allied to the US in the Gulf.
Entry into politics
Nasrallah brought Hezbollah out of hiding and transformed it into a political party, with a projection that goes beyond being a simple militia or religious brotherhood. In 1992, he participated in his first elections and won 12 seats in the Lebanese Parliament.
In the years following Israel’s departure from Lebanon, it maintained a belligerent and intransigent stance, which ultimately led to the 2006 conflict, in which Hezbollah and Israel exchanged attacks for five weeks in a private war that affected much of Lebanon.
Instead of disarming and withdrawing from Lebanon’s southern border as stipulated in the 2006 peace agreement, Hezbollah heavily rearmed, obtained long-range weapons and continued to harass Israel, which responded ferociously.
During all this time, Hezbollah consolidated itself as a Lebanese “state within a state”, with impregnable fiefdoms and a powerful military force.
In 2023, Lebanese terrorists entered the war in the Gaza Strip to support Hamas as one of its allies and to destabilize Israel’s northern flank, something that earned Hezbollah a new indirect war with the neighboring country.
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