Naim Qassem is chosen as Hezbollah’s leader to succeed The Nasrallah

Hezbollah, an armed group in Lebanon, announced on Tuesday that it had chosen deputy leader Naim Qassem to take over as secretary general in place of Hassan Nasrallah, who was murdered more than a month ago in an Israeli airstrike on a suburb in the south of Beirut.

According to a written statement from the group, Qassem, 71, was elected by its Shura Council using the procedure it had set up for selecting a secretary general.

Abbas al-Musawi, the armed group’s then-secretary general, appointed him deputy commander of Hezbollah in 1991. The following year, he was murdered in an Israeli helicopter raid.

When Nasrallah took over as leader, Qassem stayed in his position. He has been one of Hezbollah’s top spokespersons for a long time, speaking to the media, particularly during the last year’s raging cross-border clashes with Israel.

Senior Hezbollah leader Hashem Safieddine, who was thought to be the most likely successor, was murdered in Israeli attacks a week after Nasrallah was assassinated on September 27.

Qassem stated the armed group backed attempts to reach a truce for Lebanon in one of his three televised speeches after Nasrallah’s murder on October 8.

Many people in Lebanon believe that he lacks Nasrallah’s gravitas and charisma.

“If he follows in the footsteps of his predecessors Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, his tenure in this position may be the shortest in the history of this terrorist organization,” the Israeli government’s official Arabic account on X said.

“There is no solution in Lebanon except to dismantle this organization as a military force,” it stated.