An Israeli strike on Beirut targeted senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine, Axios reporter Barak Ravid said in a post on social media platform X early on Friday, citing an Israeli source.
Safieddine is the man widely regarded as the heir of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Reuters could not confirm the information in the social media post and there was no immediate official statement from any side.
Who is Safieddine?
Nasrallah’s unofficial heir
Up until Nasrallah was killed by Israeli forces just a few days ago, the question of who would one day replace him was taboo within Hezbollah. But most analysts following the group had already long been in agreement that Safieddine was the leader’s unofficial heir.
Born in the Tyre region of southern Lebanon in 1964, Safieddine is a public Hezbollah figure who – unlike his predecessor, who had to live in hiding to avoid Israeli threats – frequently appears at the group’s gatherings in person. This has helped Safieddine create special ties with Hezbollah’s members and its support base.
His position has been further cemented by the fact that he also heads the group’s executive council. According to French-language Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour, this is the equivalent to him being “Hezbollah’s prime minister”. The newspaper said that in this role he has the power to influence all kinds of decisions related to the group’s social, political and financial activities.
Although he might not be as experienced as his predecessor, Safieddine shares a multitude of similarities with Nasrallah – right down to their physical appearance and their tone of voice. But critics, including Shiite cleric and former Hezbollah executive Mohammad Ali al-Husseini, labels Safieddine as both more aggressive and much less pragmatic than Nasrallah.
“If Hassan Nasrallah was a pleasant character who was easy to deal with by those around him, Hashem Safieddine has an assertive and stubborn personality, and I would even go as far as to say bloodthirsty,” al-Husseini told Saudi broadcaster Al Arabiya. Al-Husseini broke with Nasrallah over his Iranian ties and has since been accused by Hezbollah supporters of being on “Mossad’s payroll”.
To illustrate this “bloodthirstiness”, al-Husseini said that Safieddine had repeatedly pushed Nasrallah “to strike Tel Aviv” to avenge the death of Hamas deputy Saleh al-Arouri, who was killed in Beirut’s southern suburbs in January. Safieddine “will rush to bomb Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion airport and even Binyamin Netanyahu’s home in Israel”, he said.
In a 2020 interview, Safieddine said that the only way to handle arch-foe Israel was to do it the hard way. “When Israelis see that you are weak, they are merciless,” he said. “But when they see that you are strong, they are ready to make concessions.”
He has repeatedly also said that “Israel’s fate is to disappear”.
Close ties to the Iranian regime
Like his late cousin, Safieddine is a cleric enjoying the prestige that comes with wearing the black turban indicating he is a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. In the 1980s, he undertook religious studies in the holy city of Qom, southwest of Tehran.
And just like Nasrallah, he is firmly aligned with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s doctrine of “wilayat al-faqih”, which stipulates that Iran’s supreme leader has a religious and political authority over all Muslims, not just Iranians.
This is why Khamenei will in all likelihood have the final say on who will be appointed Hezbollah’s new leader. The group was founded in 1982 to fight the Israeli occupation of Lebanon with Iran’s financial, logistical and military support.
The ayatollah is thus likely to pick Safieddine, making him Israel’s new No. 1 target. The appointment of Safieddine would strengthen Iran’s hold over the weakened and infiltrated group that on Tuesday faced an Israeli ground operation in southern Lebanon.
Following his religious studies in Iran, Safieddine went on to deepen his ties with the Islamic Republic and its security apparatus even further – to the point that they have become family. His son Reda is married to Zeinab Soleimani, the daughter of General Qassem Soleimani, the ayatollah’s right-hand man who was assassinated in Baghdad, Iraq, in January 2020.
The Iran-based Abdallah Safieddine has such status and influence that it was to him, “the head of Hezbollah’s diplomacy”, that Iran’s top dignitaries, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, on Sunday paid their respects after news reached them that Nasrallah had been killed.
Hezbollah’s top diplomat also speaks perfect Persian and always wears a dark suit, but is, unlike his brother, not a cleric. According to the US Treasury, the Iran-based brother is the engineer of various strategies to circumvent sanctions against Iran.
Washington describes him as a “cartel boss” and he was one of the main targets when the US Drug Enforcement Agency launched its “Project Cassandra” which, backed up by Israel’s Mossad, aimed to break up an international Hezbollah-led drug trafficking and money laundering ring.
“If you ask me, the Safieddines are already running Hezbollah: Abdallah from Tehran and Hashem from Beirut,” al-Husseini said in his al-Arabiya interview.
Reuters/ France24
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