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.
