Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Shia Muslim Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, is one of the most famous and influential figures in the Middle East.
Nasrallah has not appeared in public for many years because of fears of being assassinated by Israel.
And on Saturday, the Israeli military said it killed Nasrallah in an attack on Beirut. Hezbollah has yet to comment.
A shadowy figure with strong personal ties to Iran, he played a key role in transforming Hezbollah into the political and military force it is today – and is still revered by the group’s supporters .
Under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah has helped train fighters from the Palestinian armed group Hamas, as well as militias in Iraq and Yemen, and purchased missiles and rockets from Iran for use against Israel.
He steered Hezbollah’s evolution from a militia formed to fight the Israeli army occupying Lebanon into a military force stronger than the Lebanese army, a power broker in politics Lebanon, a major provider of health, education and social services, is also a key part of the effort to push Iran to support it. to gain regional dominance.
Born in 1960, Hassan Nasrallah grew up in the Bourj Hammoud neighborhood of east Beirut, where his father Abdul Karim ran a small fruit and vegetable store. He is the eldest in a family of nine children.
He joined the Amal movement, then the Shia militia, after Lebanon descended into civil war in 1975. After a brief stay in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf to study at a Shia seminary, he rejoined Amal was in Lebanon before he and others split from the group in 1982, shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon in response to attacks by Palestinian rebels.
The new group, Amal Islam, received significant military and organizational support from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards based in the Bekaa Valley, and emerged as the most prominent and prominent Shia militia. the most effective that later founded Hezbollah.
In 1985, Hezbollah officially announced its formation by publishing an “open letter” identifying the United States and the Soviet Union as the main enemies of Islam and calling for the “obliteration” of Israel, which it claimed was occupying Israel. occupation of Muslim lands.
Nasrallah worked his way up the ranks of Hezbollah as the organization grew. He said that after serving as a fighter, he became its director in Baalbek, then the entire Bekaa region, followed by Beirut.
He became leader of Hezbollah in 1992 at the age of 32, after his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi was assassinated in an Israeli helicopter attack.
One of his first acts was to avenge Musawi’s murder. He ordered a rocket attack on northern Israel that killed a girl, an Israeli security officer at the Israeli embassy in Türkiye was killed by a car bomb, and a suicide bomber attacked the ambassador Israeli restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 29 people.
Nasrallah also managed a low-intensity war with Israeli forces that ended with their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, although he suffered a personal loss when his eldest son Hadi was killed in a firefight with the Israeli army.
After the withdrawal, Nasrallah declared that Hezbollah had achieved the first Arab victory over Israel. He also vowed that Hezbollah would not disarm, saying that “all Lebanese territory must be restored”, including the Shebaa Farms area.
The situation was relatively peaceful until 2006, when Hezbollah militants launched a cross-border attack that killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others, triggering a fierce Israeli response.
Israeli warplanes bombed Hezbollah strongholds in the south and southern suburbs of Beirut, while Hezbollah fired some 4,000 rockets into Israel. More than 1,125 Lebanese, most of them civilians, died in the 34-day conflict, along with 119 Israeli soldiers and 45 civilians.
Nasrallah’s home and office were targeted by Israeli warplanes, but he survived unharmed.
In 2009, Nasrallah released a new political manifesto aimed at highlighting Hezbollah’s “political vision”. It dropped the mention of an Islamic republic found in the 1985 document, but maintained a tough stance against Israel and the US, reiterating that Hezbollah needed to keep its weapons despite the US resolution. The United Nations bans them in southern Lebanon.
“People have evolved. The whole world has changed in the last 24 years. Lebanon has changed. The world order has changed,” Nasrallah said.
Four years later, Nasrallah announced that Hezbollah was entering “a completely new phase” in its existence by sending fighters to Syria to help its Iran-backed ally, President Bashar al-Assad, quell the uprising. “This is our fight and we are determined to carry it out,” he said.
Lebanon’s Sunni leaders accuse Hezbollah of drawing the country into the war in Syria and worsening sectarian tensions.
In 2019, Lebanon’s deep economic crisis sparked mass protests against a political elite long accused of corruption, waste, mismanagement and negligence. Nasrallah initially expressed sympathy with calls for reform, but his attitude changed when protesters began demanding a complete overhaul of the political system.
On October 8, 2023 – one day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen that sparked the war in Gaza – previously sporadic fighting between Hezbollah and Israel escalated.
Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions to show solidarity with the Palestinians.
In a speech in November, Nasrallah said the Hamas attack was “100 percent Palestinian in both decision and execution” but that the shooting between his group and Israel was “very important and deliberate.” meaning”.
The group launched more than 8,000 rockets into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It also fires anti-tank missiles at armored vehicles and attacks military targets with explosive drones.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retaliated with air, tank and artillery strikes against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.
In his most recent speech, Nasrallah blamed Israel for blowing up thousands of pagers and wireless handsets used by Hezbollah members, killing 39 people and injuring thousands more. , saying they had “crossed all red lines”. He admitted the group had suffered an “unprecedented blow”.
Immediately afterward, Israel sharply escalated its attacks on Hezbollah, launching a wave of bombing that killed nearly 800 people.
