Nicholas Blanford, a Beirut-based Hezbollah expert and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, also said Safieddine has “been touted as a potential successor to Nasrallah for years”.
He has “the right credentials”, Blanford said – he is a religious figure, from Lebanon’s south, from where “most of Hezbollah’s leadership tends to come”, and also heads Hezbollah’s powerful executive council.
Hezbollah was created at the initiative of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and gained its moniker as “the Resistance” by fighting Israeli troops who occupied southern Lebanon until 2000.
The movement was founded during the Lebanese Civil War after Israel besieged the capital Beirut in 1982.
In July in a speech in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Safieddine alluded to how Hezbollah views its leadership succession.
“In our resistance … when any leader is martyred, another takes up the flag and goes on with new, certain, strong determination,” he said.
