Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, whose death was announced on Saturday, led the Lebanese group through decades of conflict with Israel, oversaw its transformation into a regionally influential military force and became one of the most prominent Arab figures in generations — with Iranian support.
Hezbollah said in a statement that Nasrallah was killed, but did not explain how he was killed. The Israeli army had previously said that it killed Nasrallah in an air strike on the party’s central headquarters in the southern suburb of Beirut on Friday.
Nasrallah’s death deals a strong blow to the party. His supporters will remember him for standing up to Israel and challenging the United States. To enemies, he was the head of a terrorist organization and an agent of Iran’s Shiite Islamic theocracy in its struggle for influence in the Middle East.
Its regional influence was demonstrated over nearly a year of conflict sparked by the Gaza war, as Hezbollah entered the fray by firing into Israel from southern Lebanon in support of its Palestinian ally, Hamas, and Yemeni and Iraqi groups, operating under its umbrella, followed suit. From the “Axis of Resistance”.
“We are facing a big battle,” Nasrallah said in an August 1 speech at the funeral of Hezbollah’s top military commander, Fouad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli raid on the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburb of Beirut.
A televised speech by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah is broadcast on large screens as fighters and mourners attend a funeral ceremony for slain supreme leader Fouad Shukr in the southern suburbs of Beirut on August 1, 2024. Hezbollah on August 1 mourned Shukr, whose body was recovered from underground. The ruins of the July 30 Israeli raid on southern Beirut, which also killed five civilians, three women and two children, and injured dozens, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, as fears mount of a broader conflict. In the region.
Khaled Desouky/AFP via Getty Images
But when thousands of Hezbollah members were injured and dozens killed when their communications equipment exploded in an apparent Israeli attack last week, that battle began to turn against his group.
In response to the attacks on Hezbollah’s communications network, Nasrallah pledged in a speech on September 19 to punish Israel.
“This account will come, its nature, its size, how and where? This is certainly what we will keep to ourselves and within the narrowest circle, even within ourselves.”
He has not given a radio speech since then.
At the same time, Israel dramatically escalated its attacks, killing several senior Hezbollah leaders in targeted strikes, and launched massive bombing of Hezbollah-controlled areas in Lebanon, killing hundreds of people.
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Nasrallah, who was recognized even by his enemies as a skilled orator, had his speeches followed by friends and enemies alike.
Wearing the black turban of the master, or descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, Nasrallah used his speeches to rally Hezbollah’s base, but also to make carefully calculated threats, often wagging his finger as he did so.
He became Secretary General of Hezbollah in 1992 at the age of just 35, and was the public face of the once obscure group founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in 1982 to fight Israeli occupation forces.
Israel killed his predecessor, Mr. Abbas al-Moussawi, in a helicopter attack. Nasrallah led Hezbollah when its fighters finally expelled Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending an 18-year occupation.
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, addresses the media on 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 his three-year-old daughter in an air strike.
Joseph Barak/AFP via Getty Images
“divine victory”
The conflict with Israel has largely defined his leadership. He declared “divine victory” in 2006 after Hezbollah waged a 34-day war with Israel, earning the respect of many ordinary Arabs who grew up watching Israel defeat its armies.
But he has become an increasingly divisive figure in Lebanon and the Arab world as the scope of Hezbollah’s operations expands into Syria and beyond, reflecting the growing conflict between Shiite Iran and US-allied Sunni Arab states in the Gulf.
While Nasrallah portrayed Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria – where it fought in support of President Bashar al-Assad during the civil war – as a campaign against jihadists, critics accused the group of becoming part of a regional sectarian conflict.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (center) holds a reception in honor of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left) in the presence of Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah (right) on February 25, 2010 in Damascus, Syria.
Jordan Becks/Getty Images
At home, Nasrallah’s critics said that Hezbollah’s regional adventures imposed an unbearable price on Lebanon, prompting previously friendly Gulf Arab states to distance themselves from the country, a factor that contributed to their exacerbation. 2019 financial collapse.
In the years following the 2006 war, Nasrallah walked a tightrope over a new conflict with Israel, stockpiling Iranian missiles in a carefully calculated competition between threat and counter-threat.
The Gaza war, sparked by Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, led to the worst conflict between Hezbollah and Israel since 2006, costing the group hundreds of its fighters including senior commanders.
After years of entanglements elsewhere, the conflict has put a new focus on Hezbollah’s historic conflict with Israel.
Nasrallah said in his speech on August 1: “Here we are paying the price for our support for Gaza and the Palestinian people, and our adoption of the Palestinian cause.”
Nasrallah grew up in the poor Karantina area of Beirut. His family comes from the village of Al-Bazouriyah in southern Lebanon, which is inhabited by a Shiite majority and which today constitutes the political stronghold of Hezbollah.
He was part of a generation of young Lebanese Shiites whose political outlook was shaped by the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.
Before leading the group, he spent nights with front-line fighters fighting the Israeli occupation army. His teenage son Hadi was killed in battle in 1997, a loss that gave him legitimacy among his core Shiite electoral base in Lebanon.
An undated photo shows Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (right) with his 18-year-old son Hadi, who was killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon on September 12, 1997. An Israeli soldier was killed on September 18, 1997 and three others were wounded in a series of Coordinated attacks launched by Hezbollah fighters on Israeli positions in southern Lebanon.
AFP via Getty Images
Powerful enemies
He had a track record of threatening powerful enemies.
As regional tensions escalated after the outbreak of the Gaza War, Nasrallah issued a veiled warning to American warships in the Mediterranean, telling them: “We have prepared for the fleets that you are threatening us with.”
In 2020, Nasrallah pledged that American soldiers would then leave the area in coffins Iranian General Qasem Soleimani He was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq.
He expressed strong opposition to Saudi Arabia over its armed intervention in Yemen, where Riyadh, with the support of the United States and other allies, sought to defeat the Iran-aligned Houthis.
As regional tensions escalated in 2019 after the attack on Saudi oil facilities, he said that Saudi Arabia and the UAE must stop the Yemen war to protect themselves.
He said in a message addressed to Riyadh: “Do not bet on a war against Iran because it will destroy you.”
During Nasrallah’s era, Hezbollah also clashed with its opponents in Lebanon.
In 2008, he accused the Lebanese government – backed at the time by the West and Saudi Arabia – of declaring war by moving to block his group’s internal communications network. Nasrallah vowed to “cut off the hand” that tried to dismantle it.
This led to the outbreak of a four-day civil war between Hezbollah and Sunni and Druze fighters, and the Shiite group seized half of the capital, Beirut.
He strongly denied any Hezbollah involvement in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, after a UN-backed court indicted four members of the group.
Nasrallah dismissed the court – which ultimately convicted three of them in absentia in 2020 on charges of assassination – as a tool in the hands of Hezbollah’s enemies.
