Lebanon’s Hezbollah says Naim Qassem will replace slain leader Hassan Nasrallah

Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group announced Tuesday that Naim Qassem, a deputy to its slain long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, will helm the Iran-backed organization. Qassem has been serving as the group’s acting leader since Nasrallah’s death. 

“Hezbollah’s (governing) Shura Council agreed to elect … Sheikh Naim Qassem as secretary general of Hezbollah,” the militant group said in a statement on Tuesday.

There was initial speculation that the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, Hashem Safieddine, would succeed Nasrallah, but he was killed in another Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs in October.

Qassem, 71, was among the founding members of Hezbollah in 1982 and has served as the party’s second in command since the group entered the political realm in the early 1990’s, according to The Counter Extremism Project, an international organization. He was born in 1953, and his family is from the village of Kfar Fila, on the border with Israel.

Nasrallah, who only gave speeches via video because of his fear of assassination, led the terrorist group for 30 years with fiery rhetoric. Qassem was the most senior Hezbollah official to continue making public appearances after Nasrallah largely went into hiding following the group’s 2006 war with Israel, and was seen as the group’s leading media personality, the Counter Extremism Project said.

Since Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli air strike on September 27, Qassem has made three televised addresses, speaking in more formal Arabic than the Lebanese dialect favored by Nasrallah.

contributed to this report.