Safieddine named new Hezbollah leader, report says

Hashem Safieddine, a prominent figure in Hezbollah's leadership, has been named by the group's executive council as the successor to Hassan Nasrallah as Secretary General, according to sources cited by Al-Arabiya on Sunday.

Nasrallah was killed in his highly secure underground headquarters, built under a complex of six buildings in the heart of Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, in a massive Israeli airstrike on Friday. He reportedly died of suffocation in an unventilated bunker, which is why his body was recovered intact from the rubble.

Safieddine (Safi Al-Din), a cousin of Nasrallah, was notably one of the senior leaders who were not present at the site of the strike that killed several top Hezbollah commanders.

Hashem Safieddine, born in 1964 in Deir Qanoun en-Nahr, a village near Tyre in southern Lebanon, studied theology alongside Hassan Nasrallah in Najaf, Iraq, and Qom, Iran—both major centers of Shia religious education. They became members of Hezbollah in its formative years.

A senior figure within Hezbollah, Safieddine heads the group’s executive council. His family is well-regarded in Shia circles and includes several religious scholars and politicians. His brother, Abdullah, represents Hezbollah in Iran, and his son Redha is married to the daughter of the late Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general killed in a US drone strike in 2020.

Apart from his relation to Soleimani, Safieddine is known to have strong relations with the Islamic Republic, where he received his religious training. He was indeed "chosen" by Hezbollah's Iranian sponsors as Nasrallah's successor a long time ago, a 2008 report by London-based newspaper Shargh al-Awsat said, citing a former senior Hezbollah commander.

Safieddine holds significant influence within Hezbollah, serving on both the Shura Council and as the head of the Jihad Council. The US and Saudi Arabia have designated him as a terrorist and imposed sanctions, including asset freezes, against him.