Israeli Military Says It Killed Top Hezbollah Leader

by · NY Times

Israeli Military Says It Killed Top Hezbollah Leader

Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Hassan Nasrallah, joined Hezbollah soon after the group was formed and rose quickly in its ranks.

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Hashem Safieddine at a Hezbollah commander’s funeral in Beirut, Lebanon, in June.
Credit...Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

By Ephrat Livni

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had weeks ago killed Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor to Hezbollah’s recently assassinated leader, in an airstrike near Beirut, Lebanon.

Speculation about Mr. Safieddine’s possible death had been swirling since Israeli warplanes unleashed strikes targeting a meeting of senior Hezbollah leadership early in October. It was one of the heaviest bombardments to hit the area, a Hezbollah stronghold known as the Dahiya, since an Israeli assault killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Sept. 27.

Mr. Safieddine, a cousin of Mr. Nasrallah and one of Hezbollah’s top officials, was presumed to be at that meeting.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military said Mr. Safieddine was killed in a strike about three weeks ago. Mr. Safieddine had a significant influence over Hezbollah and served as the group’s leader when his cousin, Mr. Nasrallah, was not in Lebanon, according to a statement from the Israeli military.

“Throughout the years, Safieddine directed terrorist attacks against the state of Israel and took part in Hezbollah’s central decision-making processes,” the statement said, adding that more than 25 Hezbollah operatives were present at the meeting where the military struck and killed Mr. Safieddine.

The Israeli military did not provide any proof for its assertion that Mr. Safieddine was dead.

Hezbollah has generally avoided commenting on his fate in the weeks since the strike. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

“We have reached Nasrallah, his replacement and most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, chief of the general staff of the Israeli military, said in a statement. “We will reach anyone who threatens the security of the civilians of the state of Israel.”

Mr. Safieddine’s death would come as yet another crushing blow for Hezbollah, which many in Lebanon now consider rudderless amid the Israeli assassination campaign against its leaders.

On Oct. 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested that Israel had killed Mr. Safieddine, but stopped short of naming him.

Israeli officials said the attack this month was targeting a meeting in a bunker that included Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor of Hezbollah’s recently assassinated leader.
CreditCredit...Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

“We took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement,” Mr. Netanyahu had said, an apparent reference to Mr. Safieddine.

The loss is another blow to Hezbollah’s leadership ranks, which have been decimated in Israel’s expanding campaign against the Iranian-backed group.

Mr. Safieddine, born in southern Lebanon in the early 1960s, was one of Hezbollah’s earliest members. He joined after the Shiite group was formed, with Iranian guidance, in the 1980s during Lebanon’s civil war. He rose quickly in the group alongside Mr. Nasrallah, playing many roles and serving as a political, spiritual and cultural leader. He also led Hezbollah’s military activities at one point.

Like Mr. Nasrallah, Mr. Safieddine usually appeared in a black turban, marking him as a revered Shiite cleric who could trace his ancestry back to the Prophet Muhammad. And like his cousin, Mr. Safieddine studied in Iran: He pursued religious studies in the city of Qom before returning to Lebanon to work for Hezbollah.

He was close friends with Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, who commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force in Iran until the United States killed him in an airstrike in Baghdad in 2020. Later that year, Mr. Safieddine’s son married the Iranian general’s daughter in a much-publicized wedding that some analysts and critics point to as emblematic of Iran’s entrenchment in Hezbollah.

The United States and Saudi Arabia designated Mr. Safieddine a terrorist in May 2017 for his Hezbollah leadership role. At the time, the State Department described him as “a senior leader” in Hezbollah’s Executive Council, which oversees the group’s “political, organizational, social and educational activities.”

The United States had designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization two decades earlier, and holds the group responsible for several attacks that killed hundreds of Americans, including the bombings of the American Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in the early 1980s, and the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

Farnaz Fassihi, Euan Ward and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.

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