Hassan Nasrallah, whom Israel killed in an air strike last week, led Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group and political party that controls much of southern Lebanon, for more than 32 years. Known for his charismatic oratory and strong organisational skills, Nasrallah transformed Hezbollah into Israel’s most formidable non-state adversary. This is his story.
Nasrallah, the eldest of nine children, was born in 1960 and grew up in Beirut’s eastern Bourj Hammoud neighbourhood, where impoverished Christian Armenians, Druse, Palestinians, and Shiites lived. His father Abdul Karim, a seller of fruits and vegetables, came from Bazouriyeh, a small Shia village in southern Lebanon.
The family was not particularly devout, but Nasrallah became interested in religion as a teen. He was influenced by the teachings of Musa al-Sadr, an Iranian-Lebanese cleric revered by Lebanon’s Shias, and the founder of a Shia party called Amal. Nasrallah said later that he spent long hours meditating before al-Sadr’s portrait, and praying to God to “make him like Sayyid Mūsā some day”, wrote Aurélie Daher in Hezbollah: Mobilisation and Power (2014).
In 1975, as civil war broke out in Lebanon, Nasrallah, then 15, joined Amal, and started to organise members in Bazouriyeh. The following year, he moved to the Shia holy city of Najaf in Iraq to study in its famous religious seminaries. (Hezbollah: A Short History (2007), Augustus Richard Norton)
In Najaf, Nasrallah met the two people who would arguably have the most influence on his life: the Lebanese cleric Abbas al-Musawi, a co-founder of Hezbollah, who became his mentor and friend, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who would lead Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. When he was in Khomeini’s company, “time and space no longer existed”, a star-struck Nasrallah would later recall, according to a report in The Economist.
Following a crackdown on Shia Islamists by Iraq’s Ba’athists, Nasrallah and Musawi returned to Lebanon in 1978. Nasrallah remained associated with Amal until 1982, when he left, convinced that the movement was “no longer up to the task” of resisting invading Israeli forces.
Nasrallah joined the paramilitary Islamic Amal, which was co-founded by Musawi and backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Islamic Amal, the most prominent and effective of the Shia militias in Lebanon, carried out suicide bombings at the US Embassy in Beirut and the barracks of American and French peacekeepers, killing at least 360 people, including 241 American service members.
In the early 1980s, the Shia militias formed Hezbollah, the “Party of God”. Nasrallah began as a fighter, and quickly rose to become the group’s director first in the city of Baalbek, then the whole Bekaa region, and then Beirut. In 1985, Hezbollah announced its aims: fighting Israel and the West in Lebanon.
In 1992, Israeli attack helicopters struck Musawi’s vehicle in southern Lebanon, killing him, his wife, and his son. Nasrallah, who succeeded him as the chief of Hezbollah at the age of 32, denounced Israel for the “blood-soaked carnage” and accused its “protector”, the US, of being “responsible for all Israel’s massacres”, The Economist report said.
Nasrallah’s retaliation included Hezbollah bomb attacks at Israel’s embassies in Turkey and Argentina; 29 people were killed in the latter attack.
A charismatic leader and speaker
The killing of Nasrallah’s 18-year-old son Hadi by Israeli commandos in 1997 raised his stock among Hezbollah’s members and supporters. “The…stoic acceptance of his son’s death is often cited by party members as one of the reasons he is so highly esteemed,” wrote Norton. The day after Hadi’s killing, Nasrallah said: “We, Hizbollah’s leadership, do not jealously guard our children.”
Nasrallah’s success in the low-intensity war against Israel that led to the Jewish state ending its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, cemented his reputation as a wartime leader.
At the same time, under Nasrallah, Hezbollah worked to develop a large welfare network in Lebanon, including health centres and schools. Hezbollah worked to become a political force (the pro-Hezbollah bloc has 62 of the 128 seats in Lebanon’s parliament today), even as it built up a formidable military arsenal with the help and backing of Iran. The group is currently believed to have hundreds of Fateh 110 ballistic missiles with a range of 260 km, according to The Economist report.
In 2006, Nasrallah led Hezbollah in another war against Israel, triggered by the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. The 34-day conflict resulted in large-scale destruction and loss of life, but earned Hezbollah admiration and respect in the Arab world.
Thereafter, Nasrallah began to project himself as the champion of all Muslims in the war against Israel. “Nasrallah is vainglorious… He sees himself as a unique, visionary figure, a revolutionary hero like Che Guevara,” researcher Hussein Ibish said in a 2006 interview with the Council on Foreign Relations.
As Israel focused closely on him, Nasrallah began to live largely underground to evade possible assassination attempts. His frequent speeches were broadcast from unknown locations and delivered via secure links to his followers. He was a charismatic speaker, holding his audiences captivated by a unique, light style that included cracking jokes.
“People listen to his speeches with the same respect with which the true faithful listen to sermons in a mosque. They also laugh at his pleasantries, loudly and strongly cheer every flight of poetry — his audience does not “tune out”. Better yet, they cite and recite key phrases from his speeches, learn passages by heart, and reproduce them on walls, posters, T-shirts, and key chains,” wrote Daher.
Near irreplaceable loss for Hezbollah
In more recent years, Nasrallah helped expand Hezbollah’s influence well beyond the borders of Lebanon. It supported the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria when it was threatened by a popular uprising that started in 2011. It also trained fighters from Hamas, as well as other members of Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, including Iraq’s Shia militias and Yemen’s Houthis.
It will be a daunting task for Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran to find a replacement for Nasrallah. The group has lost several key leaders in Israeli strikes in recent weeks, and there does not appear to be anyone surviving who is close to Nasrallah’s stature, experience or influence.
“Nasrallah will be difficult to replace… Any successor will lack his political stature in Lebanon and personal relationship with Iran’s supreme leader,” Norman Roule, a veteran of the CIA who worked at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, told Radio Farda, the Iranian branch of the US government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.