Who is Hashem Safieddine, veteran Hezbollah leader?

In the statement, the movement said it mourns the martyrdom of the head of Hezbollah’s executive council, who was assassinated only days after the assassination of Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an attack on the southern suburbs of Beirut.

“He was his brother, supporter, standard-bearer, confidant, and trusted companion in hardships and enduring challenges,” the statement said about the bond shared by the two martyred leaders.

It further said Safieddine “dedicated most of his life to serving Hezbollah, the Islamic resistance, and its community” and with responsibility and commitment managed the movement’s executive council.

“We pledge to our great martyr and his fellow martyrs to continue the path of resistance and jihad until its goals of freedom and victory are achieved,” the statement noted.

Safieddine was widely described as the most ideal candidate to replace Sayyed Nasrallah as the leader of the Lebanese resistance movement after the latter’s martyrdom on September 27.

A close aide to the martyred Lebanese resistance movement leader who served in that position for 32 years, Safieddine had for long been the head of the resistance movement’s executive council.

Safieddine was known to manage the day-to-day executive affairs of the Lebanese resistance movement while leaving strategic decisions to Sayyed Nasrallah himself.

He was labeled as a ‘specially designated global terrorist” by the United States in 2017 at the behest of the Israeli regime and its sponsors in the West for spearheading resistance activities.

Safieddine was born in 1964 in Deir Qanun En Nahr, southern Lebanon, into a scholarly family.

He was a maternal cousin of Nasrallah and his brother, Abdallah Safieddin, serves as Hezbollah's representative to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Safieddine studied theology in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf and the holy Iranian city of Qom before he returned to Lebanon in 1994 to take formal positions in the resistance movement.

A year after his return, he was appointed to the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Assembly), the highest decision-making council in Hezbollah. He was also appointed head of the Jihad Council, which oversees the resistance group’s military activities.

In October 2008, during the general meeting of Hezbollah, Safieddin was chosen as Nasrallah’s heir apparent. A year later, he was again elected to the Shura Council and the group’s commander in southern Lebanon in 2010.

The martyred leader was known for his eloquent oratory, taking inspiration from Sayyed Nasrallah and Hezbollah founder Sayyed Abbas Mousavi, the two powerful political orators of the modern era.

“If our duty, as it is today, is to be in the south (of Lebanon) fighting this enemy and offering our martyrs, we are ready to sacrifice everything, confident that Allah will grant us victory as He did in 2006,” Safieddin said in July amid the Israeli military’s aggression.

Like Sayyed Nasrallah, he was a staunch supporter of Palestine and the Palestinian cause and repeatedly reiterated the Lebanese movement’s support for the Palestinian resistance against Israel.

“The more the Israeli enemy's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on war, the quicker he hastens the end of the entity,” he remarked in July.

“Anyone who believed they could bring security to the settlers has failed. Even the Iron Dome failed, and this is a defeat and disgrace for the enemy,” he said during the 40th-day memorial ceremony for fellow martyr Sayyed Fouad Shukr earlier this month.