Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, died last Friday, victim of a targeted bombing by the Israeli army, in the southern suburbs of Beirut. He had been hiding for 18 years, since last war that pitted Israel and the pro-Iranian Islamist movement. This Saturday, both sides of the conflict publicly confirmed the death.
A declared enemy of Israel, he rarely appeared in public and his place of residence was kept secret. It did, however, receive visitors, including the leaders of Palestinian groups allied to Hezbollah, who published photographs of the meetings. Journalists and public figures who met with Nasrallah say they were taken in cars with black curtains and reinforced security measures, to an unidentifiable location.
Nasrallah regularly gave speeches that were broadcast live, with the entire country watching. He was the most powerful man in Lebanon, deciding on war or peace in the country, at the head of a heavily armed militia. At 64 years old, he was the object of a true cult of personality among his supporters, particularly within the Shiite Muslim community.
Since 1992 he was the charismatic leader of Hezbollah. He succeeded Abbas Moussaoui, who was also murdered by Israel. Since then, the movement, armed and financed by Iran, has developed into a political force represented in parliament and government. At the same time, it expanded Hezbollah’s arsenal and strength, which it says has 100,000 fighters and powerful weapons, including high-precision missiles.
In clashes with the Israeli army, Nasrallah consolidated his status and gained respect when his eldest son, Hadi, was killed in combat in 1997. The war with Israel in the summer of 2006, which lasted 33 days, allowed him to show the power of Hezbollah. The war caused the deaths of 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. In the end, Nasrallah proclaimed a “divine victory” and gained a hero’s profile in the Arab world.
In 2013, Nasrallah announced that he had entered neighboring Syria militarily to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad, plunged into a civil war triggered by the repression of a popular uprising in 2011 and which degenerated into an armed insurrection. Benefiting from the full trust of Iranian leaders, he trained and supported movements close to Tehran in the region.
Today, Hezbollah is the ‘crown jewel’ of Iran’s allies in the region, united in an ‘axis of resistance’ that includes armed groups in Iraq and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, as well as Palestinian Hamas. Since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and Israel, Nasrallah has opened up Lebanon’s southern front to support the Palestinian ally.
Hassan Nasrallah was born on August 31, 1960, into a modest family of nine children, in the former ‘belt of misery’ that surrounded Beirut. The family came from the village of Bazouriyé, in southern Lebanon.
When he was a teenager, he studied Theology in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, Iraq, but was forced to leave during the wave of repression led by the then Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein. Returning to Lebanon, he joined the Shiite Amal movement, but separated during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in the summer of 1982, to join the founding nucleus of Hezbollah, created at the instigation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Married and father of five children, Hassan Nasrallah spoke fluent Persian. He wore the black turban of the Sayyed, the descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, to whom he claimed allegiance.
