Iran Foreign Ministry offers condolences over martyrdom of Hashem Safieddine

The ministry made the remarks in a statement published on its official website on Wednesday on the occasion of the martyrdom of Sayyed Hashem Safieddine, head of the Lebanese resistance movement's Executive Council and a group of his companions during the aggression.

It condoled with the martyrs’ survivors, the regional peoples and resistance groups, the world’s Muslim nations, and Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

The statement denounced the deadly aggression as “an unforgiveable crime,” while also lambasting “the direct complicity of the US government and other governments supporting the occupying regime in this crime.”

It, however, asserted that “without a doubt, the martyrdom of the leaders of the resistance will not weaken an iota the determination, faith, and will of their leaders, the zealous fighters of the resistance front, and the free Muslim nations of the region to fight against the occupation, oppression, and aggression of the Zionist regime.”

The struggle, the ministry added, would last “until the end of the sinister phenomenon of the Zionist occupation and the realization of the rights of the Palestinian people and the region's nations, especially the fundamental right to self-determination.”

It hailed Safieddine as one of Hezbollah’s leaders and founders, and a close and loyal companion to the movement’s Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was martyred during intense Israeli attacks against the Lebanese capital Beirut in late September.

Safieddine “spent his whole honorable life pursuing the freedom of holy al-Quds and the defense of Lebanon's honor and territorial integrity against the aggression and crimes of the Zionist occupation regime, and he was finally martyred on this holy path,” the statement noted.

Hezbollah confirmed the resistance official’s martyrdom in a statement earlier in the day, saying he had ascended to martyrdom in "a brutal and aggressive Zionist airstrike."

Safieddine was widely expected to be formally elected as Hezbollah’s next secretary general after Nasrallah.