Hezbollah cleric Naim Qassem chose to lead the Lebanese militant group

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant posted on X after the announcement about Kassem: “Temporary appointment. Not for long.” It was a clear threat that Israel will go after Qassem, as it previously did by killing top Hezbollah officials.

In a televised speech earlier this month, Qassem, who holds the administrative title of sheikh, claimed that Hezbollah’s military capabilities were intact after Nasrallah’s killing and warned Israelis that they will only suffer further if the fighting continues.

He has been sanctioned by the United States, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group. His appointment came as no surprise as he had served as Nasrallah’s deputy for 32 years and had also long been the public face of Hezbollah, giving interviews to local and foreign media. Israel also confirmed last week that Hashem Safieddine, who was also considered a candidate to lead the group, had been killed weeks earlier in an Israeli attack in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

“This is a message to Lebanon and abroad that Hezbollah has reorganized itself,” said Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese analyst close to Hezbollah.

Qassem’s appointment shows that Hezbollah is running its own affairs and not, as some have reported, that advisors from Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards are now in charge of the group, Qassir added.

In an interview with the Associated Press in July, Qassem said he did not believe Israel had the ability — or had yet made the decision — to start an outright war with Hezbollah. But he warned that even if Israel planned to conduct a limited operation in Lebanon that would not lead to full-scale war, the country should not expect fighting to be limited.

“No one knows the consequences of the ignition of war in Lebanon, regionally and even internationally,” Qassem said at the time, speaking from the group’s political headquarters in Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Less than three months later, Israel expanded the war in Lebanon, killing hundreds and displacing more than 1.2 million people. The invasion has caused widespread destruction in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah’s headquarters are located. Israeli forces are involved in fierce clashes with Hezbollah in the border area on a daily basis as they try to push deeper into southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah continues to fire dozens of rockets into northern Israel and in recent days claimed an attack on an Israeli military base south of Tel Aviv. It also claimed responsibility for a drone strike that hit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home earlier this month. No one was injured in that attack.

Born in 1953 in the town of Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon, Qassem studied chemistry at the Lebanese University before working as a chemistry teacher for several years. At the same time, he pursued religious studies and participated in the founding of the Lebanese Union for Muslim Students, an organization designed to promote religion.

In the 1970s, he joined the Movement of the Dispossessed, a political organization pushing for greater representation of Lebanon’s historically overlooked and impoverished Shia community.

The group morphed into the Amal Movement, one of the main armed groups during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war and now a powerful political party led by parliament speaker Nabih Berri. Qassem then joined the nascent Hezbollah, formed with support from Iran after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the country’s southern region.

From 1991, Qassem served as the group’s deputy, initially under Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Mousawi, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in 1992.