Hasan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militant group with widespread political influence in Lebanon, is expected to make a speech Wednesday that could signal how the group may respond to the killing of a senior Hamas leader.
Saleh Arouri was a guest of Nasrallah’s when he was killed in an explosion in a Beirut suburb Tuesday, The Washington Post reported. Hezbollah has blamed Israel, though Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike.
Nasrallah had previously warned that “any assassination on Lebanese soil that targets a Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Iranian or others will certainly have a strong reaction.”
Retaliation by Hezbollah could risk a wider regional conflict that, so far, Israel, Iran and others have avoided.
Here is what to know about Nasrallah’s role in Hezbollah and his views on the Israel-Gaza war.
Nasrallah was born in Beirut in 1960. He studied to become a cleric at Shiite seminaries in Iran and Iraq.
He reportedly joined Hezbollah in the early 1980s, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. He became the leader of the group in 1992 after the assassination of his predecessor, Sayyad Abbas Musawi, by Israeli forces.
Nasrallah, 63, led Hezbollah for the latter half of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, which lasted formally for 15 years at the end of the 20th century.
Though he is not technically a public official in Lebanon, Nasrallah is one of the country’s largest-looming political figures. Hezbollah and its allies lost the majority in last year’s parliamentary elections but still hold the largest share of seats, in a time of economic crisis and widespread discontent.
Nasrallah is known for his long, bombastic speeches and a pronounced lisp. His followers call him “The Sayyed” or “Abu Hadi” — Arabic for Father of Hadi, his son who was killed in clashes with Israeli troops in 1997.
One of his most triumphant moments was during the month-long war that Hezbollah militants and Israel waged in 2006: Three days into the conflict, he was speaking on air with Hezbollah’s Al-Manar channel and said the surprises he had promised were about to begin. An Israeli warship was targeted then.
“Watch it burn,” he said.
Walid Phares, a Lebanese-born political commentator, told the Council on Foreign Relations in 2010 that Nasrallah is seen among some in Lebanon as a “messianic figure.”
In a 2006 dispatch from Lebanon, Robin Wright, then a Washington Post reporter who visited Nasrallah in Beirut, wrote that Nasrallah’s face was displayed there on computer screen savers, posters and keychains. “Taxis play his speeches instead of music,” Wright reported.
A key goal of Hezbollah, according to its 1985 manifesto, is the destruction of Israel. Under Nasrallah, Hezbollah has continued to engage in skirmishes with Israel.
Though Hamas is Sunni and Hezbollah is Shiite, and the two militant groups have disagreed on other conflicts in the region, they have found common cause recently in opposing Israel; destroying Israel is also a stated aim of Hamas. Both groups have been classified as terrorist organizations by the United States. Both receive support from Iran, experts and officials say.
The Israeli occupation of Lebanon appears to have been formative in Nasrallah’s motivations. He told Wright in 2006 that he and his peers had witnessed “what happened in Palestine, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, in the Golan, in Sinai.”
That taught him that in Lebanon, “we cannot rely on the Arab League states, nor on the United Nations,” he said. “The only way that we have is to take up arms and fight the occupation forces.”
What has Nasrallah said about the Israel-Gaza war?
Since the conflict began Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel, Hezbollah and Israel have traded fire near the Israel-Lebanon border. Yet the extent to which Hezbollah will become involved in the war between Hamas and Israel remains unclear, amid fears of wider regional escalation.
Nasrallah made his first public remarks on the matter in an address Friday, saying that Hezbollah and other Hamas allies were unaware of the plans for the Oct. 7 attack, but that Hamas had “no other choice” but to attack Israel. “The other choice,” he said, “would have been silence and death.”
In his speech, Nasrallah boasted that Hezbollah’s “daily, targeted” strikes against Israel were distracting and weakening it in its fight against Hamas. He warned Israel against any “aggression or preemptive strike” on Lebanon, which he said would be “the biggest idiocy in the history of your existence.”
Hezbollah’s fighting with Israel on the border, he said, “is a front of solidarity and support for Gaza.”
That front is evolving based on developments in Gaza, he said, adding that “all the options are on the table and we could go toward them at any point in time.”
Sarah Dadouch, Ellen Francis, Justine McDaniel, Mohamad El Chamaa and Frances Vinall contributed to this report.
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