Nasrallah's chosen successor has early advantage to take over a diminished Hezbollah

The name of Hashem Safieddine, a religious figure with operational experience, is being circulated but his ascendancy is not assured

Israel said it killed 20 Hezbollah members in the strike in which the group's leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated. EPA

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Long before Israel eliminated Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, he had anointed a successor to take over the Iranian-backed organisation in such a scenario, according to Arab security sources and political analysts who have tracked the militant group for decades.

The sources told The National that Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem nominally might take over as leader for an interim period before Nasrallah’s cousin, Hashem Safieddine, is named as his successor, although the secretive nature of the organisation and the sway of Iran over it could yield a different figure.

If Mr Safieddine, who was one of the closest people to Nasrallah, is eventually chosen, it will be the first time a Hezbollah leader will have been succeeded by a close relative since it was founded by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Syrian intelligence in the 1980s.

“Nasrallah has created a successor in his image,” said one of the sources, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The two men, the sources say, had worked closely to firm up Hezbollah’s grip over Lebanon and expand it into a cross-border strike force in the past two decades. They also substantially augmented its financing through a multibillion-dollar-a-year drugs trade, with the Captagon amphetamine. The group has denied involvement in smuggling.

Little is known about Mr Safieddine, except that he has built a reputation as a day-to-day organisational and logistics man. He studied Islamic jurisprudence in the Iranian city of Qom, and his sister was married to Qassem Suleimani, the IRGC strategist assassinated by US forces in Baghdad in 2020.

The organisation he could be taking over is much diminished from the one he helped run before the Gaza war began almost a year ago.

Shortly after the war began, Hezbollah started attacking Israel with rockets, with the declared aim of relieving pressure on Hamas, another Arab militant group supported by Iran.

A series of Israeli strikes in Lebanon and Syria since October has wiped out many senior Hezbollah commanders and crucial field officers, as well as technicians who ran the groups communications network.

The Israeli onslaught shows no signs of relenting. On Sunday, Hezbollah confirmed the death of its southern front commander Ali Karaki, who had been leading the attacks on Israel since October. He was killed alongside Nasrallah in the Beirut air strike on Friday.

The continued elimination of the senior cadre has narrowed the choices left for succession.

Safieddine family ties to Nasrallah and Suleimani, who is still revered by Iran’s hardline IRGC, constitutes another advantage for him over potential rivals

Like Nasrallah, Mr Safieddine wear a black turban, symbolising descent from the Prophet Mohammed, giving him more ideological legitimacy than Mr Qassem and other senior figures who had not been killed by Israel, the sources say.

Aymen Abdel Nour, a veteran Syrian political commentator, said the Israeli strikes have not only killed operational commanders and Hezbollah technicians, but also figures in charge of maintaining ideological purity.

Any new leader, he said, would also have to deal with a Shiite constituency in Lebanon that is increasingly doubting Hezbollah's acumen and regard for the safety of civilians, after punishing Israeli retaliation that appeared to reveal that so much of Hezbollah's arsenal is hidden in their midst.

The Israeli attacks he said, could result in "the end of the Hezbollah era", and further "erosion of trust" between Hezbollah and its constituents, regardless of who replaces Nasrallah.

The doubts also extend to Iran, which has done little to help its ally, Mr Abdel Nour said.

A member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet on Sunday said Iran should "think carefully" before "daring" to attack Israel, amid possible retaliation over the killing of Nasrallah.

"The entire Middle East, and Iran in particular, understands that Israel is not the country you want to mess with because the price you pay is very painful," Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar said.

Israel could force Nasrallah's eventual successor to review whether the group can still hold its confrontational stance towards its main foe while maintaining a regional reach in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, the source said.

"There are no answers currently to which direction what has remained of this party will take," a Lebanese source said. "We are still at the beginning. It could get much worse for Hezbollah."