Hezbollah's 'new leader' is 'eliminated', Israel believe, in another huge blow for Iran-backed terror group

Israel's defence minister claims the IDF 'eliminated' the Hezbollah heir apparent in what could be yet another huge blow for the terror group, if confirmed.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant made the announcement about Hashem Safieddine as Israel began ground operations in southwest Lebanon. 

Safieddine, a top Hezbollah official who was groomed for the leadership role by Hassan Nasrallah before he was killed in an Israeli precision airstrike on Beirut last week, has not been publicly seen for a week.

A relative of Nasrallah, he Safieddine been running the movement alongside its deputy secretary general Naim Qassem since the assassination by Israel on Sept. 27.

As the head of Hezbollah's executive council, he oversaw the group's political affairs. He also sat on the Jihad Council, where he helped manage military affairs. 

His key role in the terror group made him a prime target for Israel, though his death has not yet been confirmed by Hezbollah. 

'Hezbollah is an organization without a head. Nasrallah was eliminated, his replacement was probably also eliminated,' Gallant told officers at the IDF's northern command centre, in a brief video segment distributed by the military.

'There's no one to make decisions, no one to act,' he said, without providing further details.

Like Nasrallah, Safieddine was a cleric who wears a black turban denoting descent from Islam's Prophet Mohammed, and his physical resemblance to Nasrallah - who led the Lebanese Shi'ite group for more than three decades - also marked him as a favourite for the succession.

Safieddine hails from a prominent Lebanese Shi'ite family, and was born in the country's predominantly Shi'ite south.

He studied at religious seminaries in the Iranian city of Qom before returning to Lebanon in the 1990s to assume leadership responsibilities in the group.

Safieddine maintained strong ties to Hezbollah's backers in Iran.

His son, Rida, is married to the daughter of the late Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force until he was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

His brother, Abdullah, serves as Hezbollah's representative in Tehran.

As executive council chief, Safieddine plays a role some likened to that of prime minister of a government, responsible for an array of Hezbollah institutions involved in health care, education, culture, and construction, and other activities.

He led efforts to rebuild the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut following the group's 2006 war with Israel, when swathes of the area were flattened by Israeli airstrikes. 

In a 2012 speech, Safieddine said the post-war reconstruction had amounted to 'a new victory' over Israel.

Phillip Smyth, an expert who studies Iran-backed Shi'ite militias, said Nasrallah 'started tailoring positions for him within a variety of different councils within Lebanese Hezbollah. Some of them were more opaque than others'.

The U.S. State Department declared him a specially designated global terrorist in 2017. In response to U.S. pressure on Hezbollah that same year, he said 'this mentally impeded, crazy U.S. administration headed by Trump will not be able to harm the resistance'.

The terror group's acting leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, has said the process to name a new successor to Nasrallah was due to take place soon, 'but the circumstances are difficult because of the war'.  

Kassem, assigned to the post following the IDF's assassination of Nasrallah, said in a defiant televised statement today that even more Israelis would be displaced as Hezbollah fires rockets further into Israel. 

He also claimed that despite the severe damage done using airstrikes and the pager and walkie-talkie explosions, Hezbollah's capabilities were still intact. 

Kassem said: 'We are firing hundreds of rockets and dozens of drones. A large number of settlements and cities are under the fire of the resistance.

'Our capabilities are fine and our fighters are deployed along the front lines.'

He suggested Hezbollah's top leaders are directing the war and that commanders killed by Israel have been replaced, saying: 'We have no vacant posts.'

Despite the talk of escalation, Kassem said in his 30-minute speech that he supported attempts to secure a truce, and for the first time did not mention the end of war in Gaza as a pre-condition to halting combat on the Lebanon-Israel border.

Kassem said Hezbollah supported attempts by Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, to secure a halt to fighting, which has escalated in recent weeks with the Israeli ground incursions and the killing of top Hezbollah leaders.

'We support the political activity being led by Berri under the title of a ceasefire.'

It was not clear whether this signalled any change in stance, after a year in which the group has said it is fighting in support of the Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and would not stop without a ceasefire there.

Speaking from an undisclosed location, Kassem said the conflict with Israel was a war about who cries first, and Hezbollah would not be the first to cry. The group's capabilities were intact despite 'painful blows' from Israel.

'Dozens of cities are within range of the resistance's missiles. We assure you that our capabilities are fine,' said Kassem.

'In any case, after the issue of a ceasefire takes shape, and once diplomacy can achieve it, all of the other details can be discussed and decisions can be taken,' Kassem said. 'If the enemy (Israel) continues its war, then the battlefield will decide.' 

The regional tensions triggered a year ago by Palestinian armed group Hamas' attack on southern Israel have spiralled in recent weeks into a series of Israeli operations by land and air against Lebanon. On Oct. 1, Iran, sponsor of both Hezbollah and Hamas, fired missiles at Israel.

Iran warned Israel on Tuesday against any retaliatory attacks. Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said any attack on Iran's infrastructure will be met with retaliation.

Araqchi will visit Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East starting on Tuesday to discuss ways 'to prevent the shameless crimes of the Zionist regime in Lebanon in continuation of the crimes in Gaza'.

Sources have told Reuters that Gulf Arab states have sought to reassure Tehran of their neutrality in the conflict.

The area of Israeli operations in Lebanon has been expanding. The Israeli military said it was conducting 'limited, localised, targeted operations' in Lebanon's southwest, having previously announced such operations in the southeast.

Israel's military struck Beirut's southern suburbs overnight again and said it had killed a figure responsible for Hezbollah's budgeting and logistics, Suhail Hussein Husseini, the latest in a strong of assassinations of some of the group's top officials.