BEIRUT (Reuters) -Hezbollah’s deputy secretary normal Sheikh Naim Qassem, elected head of the Lebanese armed group on Tuesday, has been a senior determine within the Iran-backed motion for greater than 30 years.
Talking in entrance of curtains from an undisclosed location on Oct. 8, Qassem mentioned the battle between Hezbollah and Israel was a conflict about who cries first, and Hezbollah wouldn’t cry first. The group’s capabilities had been intact regardless of “painful blows” from Israel.
However he added the group supported the efforts of parliament speaker Nabih Berri – a Hezbollah ally – to safe a ceasefire, for the primary time omitting any point out of a Gaza truce deal as a pre-condition for halting the group’s hearth on Israel.
His 30-minute televised deal with got here simply days after senior Hezbollah determine Hashem Safieddine was thought to have been the goal of an Israeli strike and 11 days after the killing of Hezbollah’s secretary normal Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Safieddine’s killing was confirmed by Hezbollah on Oct. 23.
Qassem was appointed deputy chief in 1991 by the armed group’s then-secretary normal Abbas al-Musawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter assault the next 12 months.
Qassem remained in his function when Nasrallah turned chief, and has lengthy been considered one of Hezbollah’s main spokesmen, conducting interviews with overseas media together with as cross-border hostilities with Israel raged over the past 12 months.
Qassem’s televised deal with on Oct. 8 was his second since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah intensified in September.
He was the primary member of Hezbollah’s prime management to make televised remarks after Nasrallah’s killing in an Israeli air assault on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27.
Talking on Sept. 30, Qassem mentioned Hezbollah would select a successor to its slain secretary normal “at the earliest opportunity” and would proceed to combat Israel in solidarity with Palestinians.
“What we are doing is the bare minimum… We know that the battle may be long,” he mentioned in a 19-minute speech.
Born in 1953 in Beirut to a household from Lebanon’s south, Qassem’s political activism started with the Lebanese Shi’ite Amal Motion.
He left the group in 1979 within the wake of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, which formed the political considering of many younger Lebanese Shi’ite activists.
Qassem took half in conferences that led to the formation of Hezbollah, established with the backing of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
He has been the overall coordinator of Hezbollah’s parliamentary election campaigns for the reason that group first contested them in 1992.
In 2005, he wrote a historical past of Hezbollah seen as a uncommon “insider’s look” into the organisation. Qassem wears a white turban in contrast to Nasrallah and Safieddine, whose black turbans denoted their standing as descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.