Who is Hashem Safieddine, rumored to be the next Hezbollah chief?

 Following the Israeli airstrikes on Beirut, the fate of  Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's potential successor remains unclear. Hezbollah has lost contact with Safieddine since the attack, a Lebanese security source told CNN on Saturday.  Israeli officials previously told CNN that a cleric was targeted in the raid but it was unclear whether he was killed. Safieddine is Nasrallah's maternal cousin, and the two studied together in Iran  in the early 1980s. Like Nasrallah, Safieddine is a vocal critic of Israel and the West and maintains close ties with the Iranian leadership.  Safieddine served as chairman of Hezbollah's Executive Council and was considered one of the most likely  to succeed the organization's highest position until his predecessor's death. The group has yet to name a successor to Nasrallah. The Executive Council is one of five bodies that make up the Shura Council,  the organization's decision-making body. Unlike the Jihad Council, the military body of the group to which Safieddine belongs, the Executive Council oversees political affairs. Safieddine has previously spoken of Hezbollah's "strong relationship" with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), particularly with Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike at Baghdad airport in 2020. Safiedine's son is married to Soleimani's daughter.

The Shiite cleric was born in 1964 in the southern Lebanese village of Deir Qanoun en Nahr. Like the late Hezbollah leader, he wears a black turban identifying him as a "Sayyid," a Shiite honorific indicating descent from the Prophet Muhammad. The 60-year-old cleric has become a visible presence on Hezbollah's political stage, especially over the past year. Throughout the Gaza war, Safieddine has repeatedly condemned Israeli actions in the exclave and on his country's southern border. Nasrallah "has begun offering him tailored positions on various councils of Hezbollah in Lebanon." Some of them were more ambiguous than others. "They let him come and speak," Philip Smith, an expert on Iran-backed Shiite militias, told Reuters. At a memorial service for one of Hezbollah's members killed in May, Saffiedine boasted that his group remains strong and resilient, prioritizing  the Palestinian cause and the need for the liberation of the Palestinian people along with its ally Iran. After a series of bombings targeting Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies, Saffiedine said  his organization "will not give in to the end." Saffiedine has long been a vocal critic of U.S. policy, which he believes aids and abets Israeli actions in Gaza and southern Lebanon. In 2021, he accused Washington of meddling in Lebanon's internal affairs and said "American tyranny" was "sabotaging" regional countries, citing Iraq and Afghanistan as examples.  The United States designated Hezbollah a foreign terrorist organization in 1997 and Saffiedine a foreign terrorist organization in 2017.