Who is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah?

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Who is Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah?

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanon’s militant Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement, is one of the best known and most influential figures in the Middle East.

Nasrallah – who was reportedly the target of Friday’s air strike on Beirut – has not been seen in ****** for years because of fears of being assassinated by *******.

A shadowy figure with close personal links to Iran, he played a key role in turning Hezbollah into the political and military force it is today – and ******** revered by the group’s supporters.

Under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah has helped train fighters from the ************ armed group ****** as well as militias in Iraq and Yemen, and obtained missiles and rockets from Iran for use against *******.

He steered Hezbollah’s evolution from a militia founded to ****** ******** troops occupying Lebanon into a military force stronger than the Lebanese army, a powerbroker in Lebanese politics, a major provider of health, education and social services, and a key part of its backer Iran’s drive for regional supremacy.

Born in 1960, Hassan Nasrallah grew up in Beirut’s eastern Bourj Hammoud neighbourhood, where his father Abdul Karim ran a small greengrocers. He was the eldest of nine children.

He joined the Amal movement, then a Shia militia, after Lebanon descended into civil war in 1975. After a short spell in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf to attend a Shia seminary he rejoined Amal in Lebanon before he and others split from the group in 1982, shortly after ******* invaded Lebanon in response to attacks by ************ militants.

The new group, Islamic Amal, received considerable military and organisational support from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards based in the Bekaa Valley, and emerged as the most prominent and effective of the Shia militias that would later form Hezbollah.

In 1985, Hezbollah officially announced its establishment by publishing an “open letter” that identified the US and the ******* Union as Islam’s principal enemies and called for the “obliteration” of *******, which it said was occupying ******* lands.

Nasrallah worked his way up through Hezbollah’s ranks as the organisation grew. He said that after serving as a fighter he became its director in Baalbek, then the whole Bekaa region, followed by Beirut.

He became leader of Hezbollah in 1992 at the age of 32, after his predecessor Abbas al-Musawi was assassinated in an ******** helicopter strike.

One of his first actions was to retaliate to the ******** of Musawi. He ordered rocket attacks into northern ******* that ******* a girl, an ******** security officer at the ******** embassy in Turkey was ******* by a car ***** and a ******** bomber struck the ******** embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, ******** 29 people.

Nasrallah also managed a low-intensity war with ******** forces that ended with their withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, though he suffered a personal loss when his eldest son Hadi was ******* in a firefight with ******** troops.

Following the withdrawal Nasrallah proclaimed that Hezbollah had achieved the first ***** victory against *******. He also vowed that Hezbollah would not disarm, saying that it considered that “all Lebanese territory must be restored”, including the Shebaa Farms area.

There was relative calm until 2006, when Hezbollah militants launched a cross-border ******* in which eight ******** soldiers were ******* and two others kidnapped, triggering a massive ******** response.

******** warplanes bombed Hezbollah strongholds in the South and in Beirut’s southern suburbs, while Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets at *******. More than 1,125 Lebanese, most of them civilians, ***** during the 34-day conflict, as well as 119 ******** soldiers and 45 civilians.

Nasrallah’s home and offices were targeted by ******* warplanes, but he survived unscathed.

In 2009, Nasrallah issued a new political manifesto that sought to highlight Hezbollah’s “political vision”. It dropped the reference to an Islamic republic found in the 1985 document, but maintained a tough line against ******* and the US and reiterated that Hezbollah needed to keep its weapons despite a UN resolution banning them in southern Lebanon.

“People evolve. The whole world changed over the past 24 years. Lebanon changed. The world order changed,” Nasrallah said.

Four years later, Nasrallah declared that Hezbollah was entering “a completely new phase” of its existence by sending of fighters into Syria to help its Iran-backed ally, President Bashar al-Assad, put down a rebellion. “It is our battle, and we are up to it,” he said.

Lebanese Sunni leaders accused Hezbollah of dragging the country into Syria’s war and sectarian tensions worsened dramatically.

In 2019, a deep economic crisis in Lebanon triggered mass protests against a political elite long accused of ***********, waste, mismanagement and negligence. Nasrallah initially expressed sympathy with the calls for reforms, but his attitude changed as the protesters began demanding for a complete overhaul of the political system.

On 8 October 2023 – the day after the unprecedented ******* on ******* by ****** gunmen that triggered the war in Gaza – previously sporadic fighting between Hezbollah and ******* escalated.

Hezbollah fired at ******** positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.

In a speech in November, Nasrallah said the ****** ******* had been “100 percent ************ in terms of both decision and **********” but that the ******* between his group and ******* was “very important and significant”.

The group launched more than 8,000 rockets at northern ******* and the ********-occupied Golan Heights. It also fired anti-tank missiles at armoured vehicles and attacked military targets with explosive drones.

The ******* Defense Forces (IDF) retaliated with air strikes and tank and artillery ***** against Hezbollah positions in Lebanon.

In his most recent speech, Nasrallah blamed ******* for detonating thousands of pagers and radio handsets used by Hezbollah members, which ******* 39 people and wounded thousands more, and said it had “crossed all red lines”. He acknowledged the group had suffered an “unprecedented *****”.

Shortly afterwards ******* dramatically escalated attacks on Hezbollah, launching waves of ******** that ******* nearly 800 people.

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