The last message from Shiite cleric Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, came at the end of September, after thousands of communication devices used by members of the Lebanese Islamist group exploded, leaving dozens dead and thousands injured.
“This is pure terrorism. (…) They are war crimes or, at least, a declaration of war“He stated in a televised speech in which he blamed Israel for these crimes.
The speech, like all of Nasrallah’s speeches, was delivered from a secret location, as the Hezbollah leader lived in hiding for fear of an Israeli attack.
A fear that in the last few hours was confirmed with the news issued by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that the Shiite cleric would have been eliminated in the latest airstrikes on Beirut.
“Hassan Nasrallah will no longer continue to terrorize the world,” the IDF reported on its X social network account.
Hours later, Hezbollah acknowledged that its leader was dead.
Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and even over Beirut began on September 21.
But in the last few hours there was an IDF attack on the Lebanese militia headquarters in Beirut where, according to Israeli forces, the Shiite cleric was located.
Hezbollah, a Lebanese Islamist political group that has a powerful military wing backed by Iran, has been clashing with Israeli forces on the Lebanese-Israeli border since Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.
A key role in gaining power
Hezbollah was led by Hassan Nasrallah since February 1992.
Popular in both Lebanon and other Arab countries, this Shiite cleric was known to have played a key role in the group’s historic turn to enter politics and gain power in the structure of the Lebanese government.
Hezbollah, currently considered one of the most important political parties in Lebanon, has its own armed forces, which are allies of the Arab nation’s army.
Hassan Nasrallah was its secretary general and had a special relationship with both the Islamic Republic of Iran and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Although Hezbollah was included in the list of terrorist organizations of the United Statesneither the Iranian leaders nor Nasrallah hid their close relationship.
Being a character with many followers but also enemies, for years he avoided making public appearances for fear of being assassinated by Israel.
However, the fact that he lived in hiding did not deprive his numerous followers of his speeches, which were distributed almost weekly.
These speeches served Nasrallah to exercise his power, commenting on various issues that affected Lebanon and the world, and trying to put pressure on his enemies.
Childhood and adolescence
Hassan Nasrallah was born in August 1960 in one of the poor neighborhoods in the east of Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
His father owned a small food store.
Hassan was the oldest of nine children and was 5 years old when he began lebanese civil wara devastating conflict that plagued this small country for 15 years.
In it, the Lebanese demarcated borders and fought among themselves based on their religion and ethnicity.
The war pushed Hassan Nasrallah’s father to leave Beirut and return to his native Bazourieh, a town in southern Lebanon with a majority Shiite population.
During his primary and secondary education, he spent several formative years in the south of his country, among Shiites who remembered the discrimination and inequality that they felt during the colonial periods of the Ottoman Empire and France.
This sentiment continued during the period of independence, when Christian and Sunni elites took power.
During this era, Christian and Sunni militia groups were accused of receiving foreign aid to achieve military successes.
At the same time, the Shiite population – which is the majority in southern Lebanon as well as in the Bekaa Valley, in the east of the country, along with a small group of Maronite and Orthodox Christians – was the front line in the wars. with Israel during the years in which the dominion of the Jewish state in the Palestinian territories.
In this context, Hassan Nasrallah clung to his Shiite identity and his ethnic roots, and at the age of 15 he became a member of the most important Lebanese Shiite political-military organization of that time: the Amal Movement, an influential group founded by an Iranian cleric named Musa al Sadr.
Return to Lebanon and armed struggle
Nasrallah immigrated to Najaf, Iraq, when he was 16 years old.
Iraq was then an unstable country that had gone through two decades of consecutive revolutions and bloody coups d’état.
During this period, although Hasan al Bakr was still officially in power, Saddam Husseinthen vice president of Iraq, had already acquired significant influence.
Only two years after Hassan Nasrallah’s arrival in Najaf, the leaders of the Arab Socialist Baath Party and especially Hussein came to the conclusion that they must take measures to weaken the Shiites.
One of his decisions was to expel all Lebanese Shia students from Iraqi seminaries.
Although Hassan Nasrallah only studied in Najaf for two years, after which he had to leave Iraq, his presence in that country had a profound impact on his life, as there he met another cleric named Abbas Mousavi.
Mousavi was eight years older than Nasrallah and quickly assumed the role of teacher and mentor.
After returning to Lebanon, both They joined the fight in the civil war.
This time, however, Nasrallah went to Abbas Mousavi’s hometown in the Bekaa Valley, where he studied at a seminary.
The Iranian revolution and the creation of Hezbollah
A year after Hassan Nasrallah’s return to Lebanon, a revolution began in Iran, in which Ruhollah Khomeini, who had won the admiration of clerics such as Abbas Mousavi and Hassan Nasrallah, took power.
This event profoundly changed the relationship between the Shiites from Lebanon and Iran.
The political life and armed struggle of the Lebanese Shiites were significantly influenced by events in Iran.
In 1981, Nasrallah met with the then leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran, who appointed him his representative in Lebanon to “take care of the affairs of the Hisbah (charged with the defense of ‘community morality’) and obtain funds Islamic”.
Nasrallah subsequently began making occasional trips to Iran, establishing relationships with the highest officials of the Iranian government.
He anti-western sentiment It was a cornerstone of Shiite Islamism in Iran, propagated by Khomeini.
At the same time, anti-Israeli sentiment grew and the so-called Palestinian cause became one of the main foreign policy priorities of revolutionary Iran.
During this period, Lebanon, already besieged by civil war and unrest, had become a important base for Palestinian fighterswho had a strong presence in the south of the country, as well as in Beirut.
Faced with growing instability in the country, Israel attacked Lebanon in June 1982, quickly occupying important areas. He justified his attack as a response to Palestinian aggression.
Shortly after Israel’s incursion, military commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran (IRGC), experienced in conventional warfare due to Iraq’s attack on Iran, decided to establish a militia group in Lebanon.
They chose as their name the nickname by which they were known in Iran: “Hezbollah” (the party of God).
In 1985, Hezbollah officially announced its creation.
Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Mousavi, along with some other members of the Amal movement, joined this newly created group under the leadership of Subhi al Tufayli.
Hezbollah quickly made its mark on regional politics by carrying out armed actions against US forces in Lebanon.
Way to the top
When Nasrallah joined Hezbollah, he was only 22 years old and considered a rookie.
In the mid-1980s, as Nasrallah’s relationship with Iran deepened, he decided to move to the city of Qom, Iran, to continue his religious studies.
During his stay at a city seminar, Nasrallah learned Persian and forged close friendships with the Iranian political-military elites.
When he returned to Lebanon a major disagreement arose between him and Abbas Mousavi.
At the time, Mousavi supported growing Syrian influence in Lebanon under the leadership of Hafiz al Assad, father of Bashar al Assad.
But Nasrallah insisted that the group focus on attacks against American and Israeli soldiers.
Shortly after, he was named “Hezbollah representative in Iran.”
This position brought him back to Iran and at the same time distanced him.
On the surface, it appeared that Iran’s influence over Hezbollah was waning, and despite widespread support from Tehran, influencing the group’s decisions was proving challenging.
Tension escalated to the point that, in 1991, Subhi al Tufayli was removed from the position of secretary general of Hezbollah due to his opposition to the group’s affiliation with Iran, and Abbas Mousavi was appointed in his place.
After Al Tufayli’s ouster, Nasrallah, whose views on Syria’s role in Lebanon had apparently changed, returned to his country and effectively became the second in command of the group.
Abbas Mousavi was assassinated by Israeli agents less than a year after being elected secretary general of Hezbollah.
That same year (1992) the leadership of the group fell into the hands of Hassan Nasrallah.
At that time he was 32 years old and many considered that His rise was linked to his close connection to Iran.
From the perspective of many Shia clerics, he lacked sufficient religious education and, for this reason, he resumed his studies simultaneously.
An important initiative of Hassan Nasrallah at that time was the nomination of some Hezbollah affiliates and members in the Lebanese elections.
One year after the end of the Lebanese civil war, Nasrallah decided work to make Hezbollah’s political branch a serious player in the country, along with its military branch.
As a result of this strategy, the group managed to win eight seats in the Lebanese Parliament.
But Hezbollah continued to be accused of planning and executing terrorist operations.
During this period, the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Argentina and the attack on the Israeli embassy in that country occurred. same country.
The basis of the Taif Agreement that ended the Lebanese civil war allowed Hezbollah keep your weapons.
At the time, Israel had occupied southern Lebanon and Hezbollah, as an organization fighting the occupying force, remained armed.
In practice, these weapons became legitimate and legal.
Iran’s financial support for Hezbollah also enabled Nasrallah to provide welfare and social services to many Lebanese Shiites by forming a complex network of schools, hospitals, and charitable associations.
This policy, which continues to this day, became one of the important aspects of the political-social movement of the Shiites in Lebanon.
Israeli withdrawal and rise in popularity
In 2000, Israel announced that it would withdraw completely from Lebanon, ending its occupation of the country’s southern regions.
The Hezbollah group celebrated this event as a great victorywhose merit was attributed to Nasrallah.
This was the first time that Israel had unilaterally abandoned the territory of an Arab country without a peace agreement, and many Arab citizens in the region considered it a significant achievement.
Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon justified the legitimacy of Hezbollah remaining armed, leading both rival political groups and foreign powers to request the group’s disarmament, a request to which Nasrallah never acceded.
Nasrallah subsequently reached an agreement for a prisoner exchange following negotiations with Israel, which resulted in the release of more than 400 Palestinian, Lebanese and citizens of other Arab prisoners.
At the time, Nasrallah seemed more powerful and influential than ever, and his rivals in Lebanese politics faced a serious challenge in confronting him and preventing the expansion of his influence and power.
In 2008, despite a reduction in Hezbollah’s seats in the Lebanese Parliament, Nasrallah managed retain the right of veto.
That same year, the Lebanese cabinet approved allowing Hezbollah to keep its weapons.
From there, Hassan Nasrallah became a figure that none of the Lebanese elites managed to remove from the political field or even diminish their power.
Neither the resignation of prime ministers who opposed him, nor even an unprecedented intervention by Mohamed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, could make him back down.
With the Iran supportNasrallah and Hezbollah were able to overcome crises such as the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war and the long financial crisis that has plagued Lebanon since 2019.
Now, Hezbollah faces the challenge of surviving the death of its historic leader at age 64.
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