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Lebanon’s Hezbollah Names Naim Qassem as New Leader, Israel Says His Days May Be Numbered

Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem attends a memorial service for Mohammed Nasser, Hezbollah's senior commander who was killed on June 3 in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon, in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, July 10, 2024. (Reuters)
Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem attends a memorial service for Mohammed Nasser, Hezbollah's senior commander who was killed on June 3 in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon, in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, July 10, 2024. (Reuters)
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Lebanon’s Hezbollah Names Naim Qassem as New Leader, Israel Says His Days May Be Numbered

Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem attends a memorial service for Mohammed Nasser, Hezbollah's senior commander who was killed on June 3 in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon, in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, July 10, 2024. (Reuters)
Lebanon's Hezbollah deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem attends a memorial service for Mohammed Nasser, Hezbollah's senior commander who was killed on June 3 in an Israeli strike in south Lebanon, in Beirut's southern suburbs, Lebanon, July 10, 2024. (Reuters)

Lebanese armed group Hezbollah said on Tuesday it had elected deputy head Sheikh Naim Qassem to succeed Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air attack on Beirut's southern suburb over a month ago.

The group said in a written statement that its Shura Council had elected Qassem, 71, in accordance with its established mechanism for choosing a secretary general.

He was appointed as Hezbollah's deputy chief in 1991 by the armed group's then-secretary-general Abbas al-Mousawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack the following year.

Qassem remained in his role when Nasrallah became leader, and has long been one of Hezbollah's leading spokesmen, conducting interviews with foreign media, including as cross-border hostilities with Israel raged over the last year.

Nasrallah was killed on Sept. 27, and senior Hezbollah figure Hashem Safieddine - considered the most likely successor - was killed in Israeli strikes a week later.

Since Nasrallah's killing, Qassem has given three televised addresses, including one on Oct. 8 in which he said the Iran-backed group supported efforts to reach a ceasefire for Lebanon.

He is considered by many in Lebanon to lack the charisma and gravitas of Nasrallah.

The Israeli government's official Arabic account on X posted, "His tenure in this position may be the shortest in the history of this terrorist organization if he follows in the footsteps of his predecessors Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine."

"There is no solution in Lebanon except to dismantle this organization as a military force," it wrote.

Born in 1953 in Beirut to a family from Lebanon's south, Qassem's political activism began with the Lebanese Shiite Amal Movement, now a Hezbollah ally.    

He left the group in 1979 in the wake of Iran's revolution, which shaped the political thinking of many young Lebanese Shiite activists. Qassem took part in meetings that led to the formation of Hezbollah, established with the backing of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.    

He has been the general coordinator of Hezbollah's parliamentary election campaigns since the group first contested them in 1992.

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A Lebanese Family Planning for a Daughter's Wedding is Killed in an Israeli Strike on Their Home

A photo of Reda Gharib’s family, from left: Racha, Nour, Hanan, and Maya Gharib who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their house in al- Housh, in the southern town of Tyre, on September 23 at the onset of the Israeli-Hezbollah war. (AP)
A photo of Reda Gharib’s family, from left: Racha, Nour, Hanan, and Maya Gharib who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their house in al- Housh, in the southern town of Tyre, on September 23 at the onset of the Israeli-Hezbollah war. (AP)
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A Lebanese Family Planning for a Daughter's Wedding is Killed in an Israeli Strike on Their Home

A photo of Reda Gharib’s family, from left: Racha, Nour, Hanan, and Maya Gharib who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their house in al- Housh, in the southern town of Tyre, on September 23 at the onset of the Israeli-Hezbollah war. (AP)
A photo of Reda Gharib’s family, from left: Racha, Nour, Hanan, and Maya Gharib who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their house in al- Housh, in the southern town of Tyre, on September 23 at the onset of the Israeli-Hezbollah war. (AP)

The family WhatsApp group chat buzzed with constant messages. Israel was escalating its airstrikes on villages and towns in southern Lebanon. Everyone was glued to the news.
Reda Gharib woke up uncharacteristically early that day, Sept. 23. Living a continent away in Senegal, he scrolled through videos and pictures shared by his sisters and aunts of explosions around their neighborhood in Tyre, Lebanon’s ancient coastal city.
His aunts decided to leave for Beirut. His father, mother and three sisters had no such plans, The Associated Press reported.
Then his father announced to the group that he had received a call from the Israeli military to evacuate or risk their lives. After that, the chat fell silent. Ten minutes later, Gharib called his father. There was no answer.
The Gharibs’ apartment had been directly hit by an Israeli airstrike. The family had no time to get out. Gharib’s father, Ahmed, a retired Lebanese army officer, his mother, Hanan, and his three sisters were all killed.
“The whole apartment was gone. It is back to bare bones. As if there was nothing there,” said Gharib, speaking from the Senegalese capital, Dakar, where he has been living since 2020.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hezbollah site hiding rocket launchers and missiles.
Gharib said his family had no connection to Hezbollah. The direct hit gutted their apartment, while those above and below suffered only damage, suggesting a specific part of the building was targeted. Gharib said it was his family's home.
The strike was one of more than 1,600 Israel said it carried out on Sept. 23, the first day of an intensified bombardment of Lebanon it has waged for the past month. More than 500 people were killed that day, a casualty figure not observed in Gaza on a single day until the second week, said Emily Tripp, director of London-based Airwars, a conflict monitoring group.
Israel has vowed to cripple Hezbollah to put an end to more than a year of cross-border fire by the Iranian-backed militant group that began the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack triggered the war in Gaza. It says its strikes are targeting Hezbollah’s members and infrastructure. But there are also hundreds of civilians among the more than 2,000 people killed in the bombardment over the past month — often entire families killed in their homes.
Since then, the street where the Gharib family lived — an area of shops, residential buildings and offices of international agencies in Tyre’s al-Housh district — has been battered with repeated airstrikes and is now deserted.
Gharib, 27, a pilot and entrepreneur, moved to Senegal in search of a better future but always planned to return to Lebanon to start a family.
He was close to his three sisters, the keeper of their secrets and best friend, he said. Growing up, their father was often away, so he and his mother took charge of family affairs.
The last time he visited his family was in May 2023, when his sister Maya, an engineering student, got engaged. She had planned to marry on Oct. 12. But as tensions with Israel grew in September, Gharib's plans to come home for the wedding were uncertain. She told him she would put it off until he could get there.
After the strike, her fiancé, also an army officer, found her body and those of the rest of her family in a hospital morgue in Tyre.
“She was not destined to have her wedding. We paraded her as a bride to paradise instead,” Gharib said. On the day the wedding was to have taken place he posted pictures of his sister, including her wedding dress.
His sister Racha, 24, was about to graduate as a dentist and planned to open her own clinic. “She loved life,” he said.
His youngest sister, Nour, 20, was studying to be a dietitian and prepping to be a personal trainer. Gharib called her the “laughter of the house.”
There is nothing left of his family now except for a few pictures on his phone and on social media posts.
“I am so hurt. But I know the hurt will be hardest when I come to Lebanon,” Gharib said. “Not even a picture of them remains hanging on the walls. Their clothes are not there. Their smell is no longer in the house. The house is totally gone."
"They took my family and the memories of them.”