Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s radical Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement, is one of the best-known and most influential figures in the Middle East.
Nasrallah, who was reportedly the target of Friday’s Beirut airstrike, has not been seen in public for years due to fears of assassination by Israel.
A shadowy figure with close personal ties to Iran, he played a key role in turning Hezbollah into the political and military force it is today and remains respected by the group’s supporters. are.
Under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah helped train Hamas fighters and militias in Iraq and Yemen, and acquired missiles and rockets from Iran for use against Israel.
He has gone from being a paramilitary organization established to fight the Israeli army occupying Lebanon, to an army more powerful than the Lebanese Army, a power broker in Lebanese politics, a major provider of health care, education, and social services, and its support. Hezbollah has evolved into a key part of Iran’s driving force. for regional hegemony.
Born in 1960, Hassan Nasrallah grew up in the Burj Hammoud district of eastern Beirut, where his father Abdul Karim ran a small greengrocer. He was the eldest of nine children.
After Lebanon fell into civil war in 1975, he joined the Amal movement, then a Shiite militia. They split from the group in 1975 after rejoining Amal in Lebanon after a brief stay in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf to attend a Shiite seminary. In 1982, shortly after Israel invaded Lebanon in response to attacks by Palestinian extremists.
The new group, Islamic Amal, received significant military and organizational support from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, based in the Bekaa Valley, and became the most prominent and effective of the Shiite militias that would later form Hezbollah. surfaced.
In 1985, Hezbollah officially announced its establishment by issuing an “open letter” identifying the United States and the Soviet Union as the main enemies of Islam and calling for the “annihilation” of Israel’s occupation of Muslim lands. .
Nasrallah rose through the ranks of Hezbollah as the organization grew. After serving as a fighter, he said, he became in charge of Baalbek, then the entire Bekaa region and then Beirut.
He became Hezbollah’s leader in 1992 at the age of 32 after his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, was assassinated in an Israeli helicopter attack.
One of his first actions was to avenge Moussawi’s murder. He ordered a rocket attack on northern Israel that killed a girl, a car bomb killed an Israeli security guard at the Israeli embassy in Turkey, and a suicide bombing at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 29 people.
Nasrallah also led a low-intensity war with Israeli forces that ended with their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, but suffered personal losses when his eldest son Hadi was killed in a gunfight with Israeli forces. .
After the withdrawal, Nasrallah declared Hezbollah’s first Arab victory over Israel. He also said Hezbollah believes it “must recover all Lebanese territory,” including the Shebaa farm area, and vowed not to disarm it.
It was relatively quiet until 2006, when Hezbollah militants launched a cross-border attack that killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others, sparking a massive Israeli response.
Israeli warplanes bombed Hezbollah positions in the south and on the southern outskirts of Beirut, and Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets at Israel. More than 1,125 Lebanese (mostly civilians) have been killed in the 34-day conflict, including 119 Israeli soldiers and 45 civilians.
Nasrallah’s home and office were targeted by Israeli jets, but he survived unharmed.
In 2009, Nasrallah released a new political manifesto that sought to emphasize Hezbollah’s “political vision.” Although references to the Islamic Republic have been removed from the 1985 document, Hezbollah must maintain a hard line against Israel and the United States and keep its weapons despite a UN resolution banning the use of weapons in southern Lebanon. I repeated that there was.
“People evolve. The whole world has changed in the last 24 years. Lebanon has changed. The world order has changed,” Nasrallah said.
Four years later, Hezbollah is entering a “whole new phase” of its existence, with Nasrallah sending fighters to Syria to help its Iranian-backed ally President Bashar al-Assad put down the rebellion. he declared. “This is our fight and we are going to take it,” he said.
Lebanon’s Sunni leaders accused Hezbollah of drawing the country into the Syrian war, and sectarian tensions worsened dramatically.
In 2019, Lebanon’s severe economic crisis sparked mass protests against a political elite long accused of corruption, waste, mismanagement and negligence. Prime Minister Nasrallah initially expressed sympathy for calls for reform, but changed his tune after protesters began demanding an overhaul of the political system.
On October 8, 2023, the day after the unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas militants that triggered the Gaza War, the previously sporadic fighting between Hezbollah and Israel intensified.
Hezbollah opened fire on Israeli positions in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Prime Minister Nasrallah said in a speech in November that the Hamas attack was “100% the decision and execution of the Palestinians,” but that the firing between the Hamas group and Israel was “very important and significant.” said.
The group fired more than 8,000 rockets into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They also fired anti-tank missiles at armored vehicles and attacked military targets with explosive drones.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retaliated with airstrikes and tank and artillery fire against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.
In a recent speech, Prime Minister Nasrallah blamed Israel for detonating thousands of pagers and wireless devices used by Hezbollah members, killing 39 people and injuring thousands more, saying that Israel had “been beyond.” “I crossed all the lines that I shouldn’t have.” He acknowledged that the group had suffered an “unprecedented blow.”
Shortly after, Israel dramatically escalated its attacks on Hezbollah, launching waves of bombings that killed nearly 800 people.
