Keystone-SDA
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September 28, 2024 – 9:28 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) The Shura Council, the party’s highest body, should soon elect the successor to the charismatic Hassan Nasrallah at the head of Hezbollah. Hachem Safieddine is “the most likely candidate” to win this election.
In the meantime, the current number two of the pro-Iranian Islamist movement, Naïm Qassem, should take the lead of the movement, a source close to Hezbollah told AFP.
Distant relative of Hassan Nasrallah, 64, with whom the resemblance is striking, Hachem Safieddine is a few years his junior. He studied religion in Iran. His son is married to Zeinab, daughter of powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, killed in 2020 in an American strike in Iraq. Soleimani was the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, responsible for external operations.
Safieddine is one of the most important members of the Shura Council. Like Nasrallah, he wears the black turban of the Sayyed, the descendants of the prophet Mohammed, to whom he claims his affiliation. He was designated a “terrorist” by the US State Department in May 2017, and by Saudi Arabia.
“For several years, rumors have been circulating according to which Hachem Safieddine is the most likely candidate to succeed” Hassan Nasrallah, says Amal Saad, Hezbollah specialist and lecturer at Cardiff University.
