Israel confirms death of heir apparent to slain Hezbollah leader

Israel confirmed it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the heir apparent to late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was killed last month in an Israeli attack targeting the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group.

The military said Safieddine was killed in a strike carried out three weeks ago in Beirut’s southern suburbs, its first confirmation of his death. Earlier this month, Israel said he had probably been eliminated.

There was no immediate response from Hezbollah to Israel’s statement that it had killed Safieddine.

Who is Hashem Safieddine?

Hashem Safieddine was widely seen as Hassan Nasrallah’s likely successor as head of the Iran-backed group.

A relative of Nasrallah, he has been running the movement alongside its deputy secretary general Naim Qassem since Nasrallah’s assassination by Israel on Sept. 27.

Safieddine has sat on the group’s Jihad Council – the body responsible for its military operations. He is also head of its executive council, overseeing financial and administrative affairs for the Iran-backed group.

If his death is confirmed by Hezbollah, it would mark another major blow to the group after Israel assassinated several of its leaders and commanders.

While not as well-known to Israelis as Nasrallah, Safieddine is seen by Israel as a leading target in what it deems a terrorist organisation and a proxy for arch-foe Iran.

Safieddine assumed a prominent role speaking for Hezbollah during the past year of hostilities with Israel, addressing funerals and other events that Nasrallah had long avoided for security reasons.

He was the first Hezbollah official to speak in public after the group’s Palestinian ally Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, igniting the Gaza war that drew the Lebanese Shi’ite Islamist movement into a parallel conflict with Israel.

With observers across the Middle East waiting to see what Hezbollah might do to help Hamas, Safieddine told a rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs the day after the attack that the group’s “guns and our rockets are with you”.

“Everything we have is with you,” Safieddine declared.

Like Nasrallah, Safieddine wears the black turban denoting his status as a sayyed, or descendent of the Prophet Mohammed. He bears a strong physical resemblance to Nasrallah.

He hails from a prominent Lebanese Shi’ite family, and was born in the country’s predominantly Shi’ite south.

Safieddine studied at religious seminaries in the Iranian city of Qom before returning to Lebanon in the 1990s to assume leadership responsibilities in the group.

He maintained strong ties to Hezbollah’s backers in Iran.

His son, Rida, is married to the daughter of the late Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force until he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

His brother, Abdullah, serves as Hezbollah’s representative in Tehran.

As executive council chief, Safieddine plays a role some likened to that of prime minister of a government, responsible for an array of Hezbollah institutions involved in health care, education, culture, and construction, and other activities.

He led efforts to rebuild the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut following the group’s 2006 war with Israel, when swathes of the area were flattened by Israeli airstrikes. In a 2012 speech, Safieddine said the post-war reconstruction had amounted to “a new victory” over Israel.

Phillip Smyth, an expert who studies Iran-backed Shi’ite militias, said Nasrallah “started tailoring positions for him within a variety of different councils within Lebanese Hezbollah. Some of them were more opaque than others”.

The U.S. State Department declared him a specially designated global terrorist in 2017. In response to U.S. pressure on Hezbollah that same year, he said “this mentally impeded, crazy U.S. administration headed by Trump will not be able to harm the resistance”.

“We have reached Nasrallah, his replacement and most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership. We will reach anyone who threatens the security of the civilians of the State of Israel,” said Israeli army chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi.

Israel has been carrying out an escalating offensive in Lebanon after a year of border clashes with Hezbollah, the most formidably armed of Iran’s proxy forces across the Middle East. The group has been acting in support of Palestinian militants fighting Israel in Gaza but is reeling from a spate of killings of its senior commanders in Israeli airstrikes in recent weeks.

A relative of Nasrallah, Safieddine was appointed to its Jihad Council – the body responsible for its military operations – and to its executive council, overseeing Hezbollah’s financial and administrative affairs.

Safieddine assumed a prominent role speaking for Hezbollah during the last year of hostilities with Israel, addressing funerals and other events that Nasrallah had long been unable to attend for security reasons.

Israel has so far shown no sign of relenting in its Gaza and Lebanon campaigns even after assassinating several leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, which lost Nasrallah, its powerful secretary-general, in a Sept. 27 airstrike.

Diplomats say Israel aims to lock in a strong position before a new U.S. administration takes over following the Nov. 5 election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.

BLINKEN ON MIDEAST TOUR

Israel’s confirmation of Safieddine’s death came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday to capitalise on the killing of Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar by securing the release of the Oct. 7 attack hostages and ending the war in Gaza.

After repeated abortive attempts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Blinken was making his 11th trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war erupted – and the last before a presidential election that could upend U.S. policy.

Blinken was also seeking ways to defuse the conflict in Lebanon, where overnight at least 18 people were killed, including four children, and 60 injured by an Israeli airstrike near Beirut’s main state hospital.

Blinken faced an uphill struggle on both fronts.

He spelled out U.S. hopes that the death of Hamas leader Sinwar – blamed for triggering a year of devastating warfare by planning the deadly militant assault from Gaza on Israeli territory on Oct. 7 last year – will provide a new opportunity for peace.

In a statement issued by his office, Netanyahu said Sinwar’s elimination “may have a positive effect on the return of the hostages, the achievement of all the goals of the war, and the day after the war”.

But there was no mention of a possible ceasefire after a year of war in which Hamas’ military capabilities have been greatly degraded and Gaza largely reduced to rubble, with most of its 2.3 million Palestinians displaced.

For its part, Hamas has refused to free scores of hostages in Gaza seized in its Oct. 7, 2023, raid on Israel without an Israeli pledge to end the war and pull out of the territory.

As Blinken huddled with Israeli leaders, Hezbollah ruled out negotiations while fighting continues with Israel, and it claimed responsibility for a drone attack targeting Netanyahu’s holiday home on Saturday.

Hezbollah announced dozens of attacks against Israeli targets on Tuesday, including what it said were Israeli military sites near Haifa and Tel Aviv, suggesting its capabilities have survived Israel’s biggest onslaught in decades of hostilities.

Israeli strikes also continued across Lebanon on Tuesday, including one of which caused the precipitous collapse of an multi-storey building near central Beirut, sending more panicked residents fleeing.

Israel’s offensive has driven at least 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes and killed 2,530 people, including at least 63 over the past 24 hours, the Lebanese government said on Tuesday.