For thirty years, he has lived hidden in the shadows and secrecy. The powerful leader of Lebanese Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah, whose headquarters was hit Friday by a violent Israeli airstrike on the southern suburbs of Beirut, has been living in hiding for years to escape Israel. According to Israeli television, the bombings targeted the leader of Hezbollah in person, who was unharmed according to a source close to the powerful pro-Iranian group.
Enemy sworn in Israel, it has only rarely appeared in public since the war which opposed its movement to the Israeli army in the summer of 2006, and its place of residence is kept secret. However, he receives visitors including the leaders of Palestinian groups allied to his group, who publish photos of the meetings.
Journalists and personalities who meet him claim to be driven by Hezbollah in cars with thick curtains, and with reinforced security measures, to an unidentifiable location. Hassan Nasrallah, however, regularly delivers speeches broadcast live, to which the entire country is suspended.
He is the most powerful man in Lebanon, deciding on war or peace in the country, head of an impressive heavily armed militia. This 64 -year -old man of religion is the subject of a true cult of personality among his faithful, especially within the Shiite Muslim community from which he came.
He has been the charismatic leader of Hezbollah since 1992, when he succeeded Abbas Moussaoui, assassinated by Israel. Since then, he has patiently changed Hezbollah, armed and funded by Iran, in an essential political force, represented in Parliament and the government.
At the same time, he developed the arsenal of his training, which, according to him, has 100,000 combatants, and has powerful weapons, including long -range missiles. Hezbollah is the only training to have retained its arms at the end of the Lebanon War (1975-1990) in the name of “resistance against Israel”, from which the army gradually retired from the country until evacuating them , in May 2000, the south, after 22 years of occupation.
Throughout the clashes between his men and the Israeli army, Hassan Nasrallah consolidated his stature, and gained respect with the death in 1997 of his eldest son Hadi in combat. The war of summer 2006 with Israel, which lasted 33 days, allows him to display the power of his movement, his fighters heading to the Israeli army.
The war caused the deaths of 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. At the end of this war, Hassan Nasrallah proclaimed a “divine victory” and gained the profile of a hero in the Arab world.
But in Lebanon, he alienated several camps, when his party was accused of being involved in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005, then when his armed men briefly took control of the capital in mai 2008.
Hassan Nasrallah has increased his influence not only in Lebanon, but also in the region. In 2013, he announced that he had intervened militarily in neighboring Syria to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad, entangled in the civil war launched by the repression of a popular uprising in 2011 having degenerated into armed insurrection.
Enjoying the total trust of Iranian leaders, he trains and supports movements close to Tehran in the region. Hezbollah is today the “jewel of the crown” of the allies of Iran in the region gathered within an “axis of the resistance”, which includes armed groups in Iraq and the Houthi rebels of Yemen as well as le Hamas palestinien.
Since the start of the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, Hassan Nasrallah has opened the southern Lebanese front to support his Palestinian ally, but is so far trying to avoid a full-scale war with Israel.
Hassan Nasrallah was born on August 31, 1960 in a modest family of nine children, in the old “belt of misery” which enclosed Beirut. His family comes from the village of Bazouriyé in southern Lebanon.
As a teenager, he studied theology in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, Iraq, but had to leave during the wave of antichitis repression of the Iraqi president of the Saddam Hussein era. Back in Lebanon, he joined the Amal Shiite movement, but seceded during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982 to be part of the founding nucleus of Hezbollah, created under the leadership of the guards of the révolution iraniens.
Married, father of five, Hassan Nasrallah fluently speaks the Farsi. He sports the black turban of the Sayyed, the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad which he claims to be. In a rare interview, he said that he was playing football in his youth and still loves Diego Maradona.
