Hassan Nasrallah, longtime leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, is killed by his archenemy Israel

[Pelican Press 0]

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Hassan Nasrallah, longtime leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, is ******* by his archenemy *******

BEIRUT (AP) — Hezbollah leader

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, who transformed the

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and political force in the Middle East, was ******* in an ******** airstrike, the group said. He was 64.

Nasrallah, who spearheaded Hezbollah’s war against ******* in 2006 and got the group heavily involved in neighboring Syria’s brutal conflict, was ******* in a massive ******** airstrike on the Beirut southern suburb of Haret Hreik Friday evening that knocked down several multistory apartment buildings.

“His eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, had joined his fellow great martyrs whom he had led for 30 years from one victory to another,” Hezbollah said in a statement. It added that Nasrallah “fell as a martyr on the road to Jerusalem.”

Fears of a regional war

Nasrallah’s ****** comes amid a dizzying escalation in the nearly yearlong conflict between ******* and Hezbollah, since the war in Gaza started, and more than three decades after he took leadership of the Iranian-backed militant group following the ******** of his predecessor by an ******** missile in 1992. Five years later, the ******* States designated Hezbollah a ********** organization.

Hezbollah has been ******* rockets, missiles and drones into northern ******* in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and ******, an allied Iran-backed militant group. ******* has responded with

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and the targeted ******** of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a wider operation.

This week has been the deadliest in Lebanon since the bruising 2006 monthlong war between ******* and Hezbollah.

First, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used mainly by Hezbollah members

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, ******** 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000, many of them civilians. Lebanon blamed *******, but ******* did not confirm or deny responsibility. Nasrallah had promised to retaliate.

Then, ******** strikes on Lebanon ******* more than 700 people in five days, including at least 150 women and children, according to Lebanese authorities.

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— and Israelis wouldn’t be able to return to their homes in the north — until *******’s campaign in Gaza ended.

Seen by his supporters as a charismatic and shrewd strategist,

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into an archenemy of *******, cementing alliances with the ayatollahs in Tehran and ************ militant groups such as ******.

Idolized by his Lebanese Shiite followers and respected by millions of others across the ***** and Islamic world, Nasrallah held the title of sayyid, an honorific meant to signify the Shiite cleric’s lineage dating back to the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

Nasrallah’s image appears on billboards in the group’s strongholds across Lebanon — especially in southern Beirut, Hezbollah’s headquarters — and on trinkets in souvenir shops not only in Lebanon but also in countries such as Syria and Iraq.

Despite the power he wielded, Nasrallah lived largely in hiding in the last years of his life for ***** of an ******** **************, giving speeches to followers via a satellite link.

A fiery orator viewed as an extremist in the U.S. and much of the West, as well as in some oil-rich Gulf ***** countries, he was also considered a pragmatist compared with the firebrand militants who dominated Hezbollah after its founding in 1982, during

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War after war in the Middle East

Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah fought ******* to a stalemate during the 34-day war in 2006 and was credited with leading the war of attrition that led to the withdrawal of ******** troops from south Lebanon in 2000, after an 18-year occupation. Nasrallah’s eldest son, Hadi, was ******* in 1997, while fighting against ******** forces.

When Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, Hezbollah fighters rushed in, siding with

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— even though Hezbollah’s popularity took a ***** as the ***** world ostracized Assad.

Along with Damascus’ key allies Russia and Iran, Hezbollah played a major role in helping Assad stay in power and eventually retake territory lost in the early years of the conflict.

Hezbollah saw its popularity among ****** surge again when it came to the defense of ******, opening a front with ******** forces along the *******-Lebanese border barely a day after the

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The ******-led ******* ******* around 1,200 people in ******* and took about 250 ********, triggering one of the most destructive military campaigns in modern history. *******’s subsequent

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******* tens of thousands of Palestinians.

In June 2024,

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and capabilities. Nasrallah also claimed that

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than the 100,000 figure he gave three years earlier.

The early years

Nasrallah, the eldest of nine siblings, was born into a poor family in Beirut’s impoverished northern suburb of Sharshabouk. In 1975, the Lebanese civil war forced the family to flee south, to their ancestral home in Bazzouriyeh, a village near the ancient Phoenician port city of Tyre.

There, Nasrallah joined the Amal movement, a political and paramilitary organization representing the once-marginalized Shiites in Lebanon, and soon began his rise as a revolutionary.

At the age of 16, he went to Iraq’s holy Shiite city of Najaf where the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, lived in exile at the time and taught theology. Later, Nasrallah studied in the city of Qom, the seat of Iran’s religious hierarchy.

Nasrallah was among Hezbollah’s founders when the party was formed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard members who came to Lebanon in the summer of 1982 to ****** invading ******** forces.

He built a power base as Hezbollah over time became part of a cluster of Iranian-backed factions and governments known as the Axis of Resistance. It was also the first group that Iran backed and used as a way to export its brand of political Islam.

Two days after its leader, 39-year-old Sayyed Abbas Musawi, was ******* in an ******** helicopter gunship raid in south Lebanon, Hezbollah chose Nasrallah as its secretary-general in February 1992.

Like Musawi, Nasrallah was committed to the struggle against ******* and Khomeini’s anti-Western teachings, and famously declared: “America will remain the dreadful ****** and ******* a cancerous growth that should be uprooted.”

A ******-turbaned cleric or a militant leader?

Wearing spectacles and sporting a bushy gray beard like many religious Shiite men, Nasrallah’s image was far from that of a militant who commanded thousands of heavily armed, well-trained and battle-hardened followers.

He often paused in his speeches to make jokes or break into local dialect and once, responding to a reporter asking about his monthly salary during a television interview, Nasrallah said it was about $1,300.

Following the end of Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war, Nasrallah gradually turned the organization into a “state within a state,” with an elaborate social ******** network that provided schools, clinics, and housing in the impoverished and predominantly Shiite parts of Lebanon.

After *******’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, Nasrallah rose to iconic status both within Lebanon and throughout the ***** world. His messages were beamed on Hezbollah’s own radio and satellite TV station.

In a famous speech marking the ******** withdrawal, he said: “It (*******) has a nuclear ******* and the strongest air force in the region, but in truth, it is weaker than a spider’s web.”

As *******, and later Syria, pulled their armies out of Lebanon, Nasrallah began to steer Hezbollah increasingly into the realm of politics. In the 2005 parliamentary elections, the first after Syria ended its 29-year military presence in Lebanon, Hezbollah made substantial gains and joined the Cabinet for the first time, holding two seats.

Politics and war

In July 2006, after Hezbollah captured two ******** soldiers in a cross-border *******, ******* launched a monthlong massive air, sea and ground campaign against Lebanon. Nasrallah’s home and offices and much of the group’s infrastructure were destroyed, as well as much of south Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs.

Hezbollah fired around 4,000 rockets into ******* and after 34 days of fighting, a truce took effect and Nasrallah declared a “divine victory” over *******.

While he was cheered for standing up to the ******** army, Nasrallah was criticized by many for providing the spark for that war during which more than 1,200 people ***** in Lebanon — most of them civilians — and 159 in *******.

Nasrallah later expressed regret — an unprecedented move for him — and said during a televised interview that Hezbollah had not expected “even one percent” that the capture of the ******** soldiers “would lead to a war of this magnitude.”

“You ask me, if I had known … that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not,” he said.

In May 2008, Hezbollah’s reputation suffered a setback when its fighters briefly seized much of west Beirut, turning their guns on local Lebanese foes after the government took measures against the group’s private telecommunications network.

In the years that followed, a

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sentenced three Hezbollah members in absentia to five concurrent life sentences over the 2005 ************** of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Hezbollah ignored the tribunal and repeatedly denied its members were involved in the massive ******** ******** along the Beirut corniche that ******* Hariri and 21 others, an ******* that deeply divided Lebanon.

During the

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, Hezbollah’s close alliance with Syria and Iran opened the group to accusations that it was merely a well-armed tool of Damascus and Tehran.

Hezbollah was also pulled into the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia and in 2016, the Saudi-led, six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council

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But Hezbollah’s anti-******* campaign remained at its forefront as the group continued to build up its arsenal of tens of thousands of missiles, including precision-guided missiles, as well as drones.

After 2006, the Lebanon-******* border remained mostly calm until ******’ October 2023 deadly incursion into *******. The next day, Hezbollah began attacking ******** military posts and drawing ******** ***** in what became near-daily exchanges. Nasrallah said the aim was to ease the tension from the Gaza Strip.

Nasrallah is survived by his wife, Fatima Yassin. He also has three sons Jawad, Mohammed-Mahdi and Mohammed Ali, and a daughter Zeinab, as well as several grandchildren.

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#Hassan #Nasrallah #longtime #leader #Lebanons #Hezbollah #******* #archenemy #*******

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