Hashem Safieddine, cousin and likely successor to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah
It was probably obvious that the charts released by the IDF and Western state media showing that the entire leadership of Hezbollah were deceptive.
A statement by kike-sucking traitor Tom Cotton that “whoever is running Hezbollah now wasn’t important enough to have a pager” stressed how ridiculous it was to claim that literally no one was left.
It had to simply be assumed that while a large portion of the leadership was decapitated, with the loss of Nasrallah specifically being an overwhelming blow, there must be some people left to run the organization.
Everyone knew that it was widely believed that Nasrallah’s cousin, Hashem Safieddine, was likely to become the new leader of the group, but his previous role beyond the blood relation wasn’t clear to me.
(Safieddine is visibly nowhere near as charismatic as Nasrallah, who was a larger than life character like Mao, Donald Trump, or one of the Kims. However, many a paramilitary group has functioned fine without a larger-than-life charismatic leader.)
With little knowledge of the command structure of Hezbollah, I tried to dig into various source on the organization, and found it greatly tedious, with the actual level of strategic/military importance and competence of individuals and various councils being unclear. It quickly became obvious that it would take a significant amount of reading to actually feel like I understand the situation. Obviously, it’s my job to do reading and explain what I’ve read to you, dear reader, in as simple of terms as possible, and therefore I have more time than most to study, but there are only so many hours in the day, so what I read has to be prioritized.
A reader, who is either a member of the group, a Middle East scholar, or severely autistic, sent me a detailed analysis of the situation.
I can’t vouch for the precision of this account, but it’s the most concise and coherent thing I’ve read about the current status of the group, and I can confirm that it reflects the various bits I read about the organization’s structure. (This is to say, the names of individuals and councils are definitely correct here, but I can’t personally for their strategic relevance, as actually putting in the effort to understand the details of this would take a lot of time I do not have becoming an expert on Hezbollah’s command structure).
Reader comments follow.
Hezbollah’s leadership is complex, I believe partly by design, to have resiliency in the event of losses, and partly because byzantine politics is just an inherent peculiarity of Lebanese culture.
At the top of the pyramid is a Shura Council, below which there are five other councils that direct particular spheres of activity. Those are the Executive, Jihad, Political, Parliamentary, and Judicial Councils. The two most relevant ones are Jihad and Executive; Jihad oversees military operations, while Executive is the main administrative branch. The other three councils are focused on domestic politics within Lebanon.
The Shura Council has seven members: the heads of each of the five lower councils, the Secretary General (previously Nasrallah), and a Deputy Secretary General.
I’ve referred to Naim Qassem and Hashem Safieddine previously as Hezbollah’s next two top guys. Naim Qassem is the Deputy Secretary General. Hashem Safieddine is the Executive Council’s man on the Shura Council (and a blood relative of Nasrallah).
Both are alive and well. In fact, all six of the other members of the Shura Council are. Nasrallah was the only one killed in the recent bombings. Nasrallah left a big chair to fill, but his innermost circle is still intact. These men have all been in the leadership since the 1990s, none of them are neophytes. Nasrallah’s death is a contingency that would have been planned for long ago (he was not in fact Hezbollah’s founding leader).
The Executive Council, as previously mentioned, is chaired by Safieddiene, alive and well. His second-in-command, Nabil Qaouk, was killed in the follow up bombing the day after Nasrallah’s death. He was also apparently pulling double duty as a military commander. The Executive Council has eight departments that look like typical government ministries (health, education, media, foreign relations, etc). None of those have been targeted for assassination, so Hezbollah’s basic day-to-day functioning as far as civil affairs has not been disrupted too much.
The Jihad Council, overseeing Hezbollah’s armed forces, is obviously the most relevant to the war, and has been the main target of the Jews. The Jihad Council functions like the Department of Defense; it’s the administration that oversees military affairs, but actual command in the field is carried out by the military hierarchy. The Jihad Council will prepare the overall strategy and present recommendations on specific military operations to the Shura Council, but it’s the Shura Council that decides whether to put them into action or not.
Nasrallah held a seat on both the Shura Council and the Jihad Council, so he could be involved in every stage of the decision making process for military affairs. Hashem Safieddiene also holds a seat on the Jihad Council, thus making him the most probable successor to Nasrallah, with experience in both the political and the military domains (Naim Qassem as Deputy Secretary General is formally above him, but he has only served on the political side, so he’s more likely to continue as number two).
Three members of the Jihad Council have been killed thus far in the current war. Fuad Shukr was killed at the end of July; he does not seem to have held a particular field command, but served as a general military advisor to Nasrallah and was a core member of Hezbollah’s old guard. Ibrahim Aqil was killed the week before Nasrallah; Aqil was commander of the Radwan Unit (I will explain the military units later) and was serving as the overall field commander on the border with Israel. The third was Ali Karaki, who was tapped to replace Aqil in leading the southern front; Nasrallah was holding a meeting with him and the Iranian Qods Force general when the Israelis bombed Beirut and killed all three.
Those losses will be sorely felt, particularly Shukr and Aqil, both highly respected veterans with decades of experience. But the Jihad Council has not been wiped out either. In addition to Safieddiene, there are about half a dozen other members who are still alive. Once again, there is not a void where the Israelis have killed every leader.
Below the Jihad Council is the actual military hierarchy, commanding a number of different special units as well as the militia. The Radwan Unit is the one you have been hearing the most about. This is Hezbollah’s commando force, about a brigade strong (2,000-3,000 men), trained in special forces style. Radwan is the unit the Israelis fear the most, because it is the one trained and tasked with cross-border raids. Prior to the current war, the ability to launch these raids was a key deterrence option for Hezbollah. If pushed too far, Hezbollah could send Radwan to ambush an IDF patrol and take prisoners (how the 2006 war was started). After 2006, the goals for the unit became more ambitious; Hezbollah hoped they could overrun some of Israel’s settlements near the border and return to Lebanon with large numbers of hostages.
Radwan has thus been heavily targeted. Israel has been gunning for its leaders over the past year, and Aqil was killed in a meeting with many senior officers from the group. Out of Hezbollah’s entire structure, it is the Radwan Unit that has suffered the most from the decapitation campaign. However, given the current circumstances of the war, Radwan’s special mission that it focused on is simply no longer relevant. The IDF has fully mobilized, all those settlements in the north have been evacuated, and Netanyahu doesn’t care about hostages. There would be no point in sending these elite soldiers on high-risk missions across the border anymore, so temporarily crippling their ability to do so doesn’t mean all that much; they’re going to be used defensively instead. Radwan has now appointed a new commander, Ali Reda Abbas.
In addition to Radwan, the Aziz Unit is another elite unit specializing in cross-border operations. Where Radwan was trained as shock commandos for launching attacks, Aziz is more focused on reconnaissance and intelligence gathering. Aziz’s commander, Mohammed Nehme Nasser, was killed in July, but will have since been replaced.
The Nasr Unit is another specialized division in the southern theater, focusing on defensive operations. Nasr’s commander Taleb Abdullah was killed in June, along with the commander of its rocket unit, Muhammad Mustafa Ayoub.
Other special units include Badr, which provides a reserve behind Nasr and is also currently deployed in Syria; Haidar, which defends the group’s core territory in the Beqaa Valley of northeast Lebanon; Dahiya, maintaining security in Beirut; and Al-Kayim, focusing on logistical support. None of these units have been hit particularly hard or had the commanders killed.
There are also several different secret units which do not operate openly or use names, simply designated by number. They handle espionage and black operations abroad. Ones known to exist include Unit 133, which operates overseas; Unit 3800, which liases and coordinates with other Axis of Resistance militias in the Middle East; and Unit 900, which handles counter-intelligence and internal security. There are several others whose numbers are known, but it’s not clear what their particular tasks are. The Israelis do not claim to have killed any commanders of the secret units either.
Finally, there are the Resistance Brigades. While Hezbollah’s full-time professional soldiers fill the ranks of the named divisions like Radwan, Nasr, and so on, there are tens of thousands of militiamen who serve as auxiliaries and reservists to be called up in wartime. These are organized at the local level; every village will have its own Hezbollah cell that takes up arms if the Israelis invade the area. Some of these reservists were called up to serve rotations alongside the professional soldiers in Syria in order to gain combat experience. The Resistance Brigades also incorporate some Christians, Sunnis, and other non-Shia fighters. Because they are decentralized and operate semi-independently, the killing of major political leaders or commanders in the special units will have little impact on them.
To summarize:
- Nasrallah is dead, and will be deeply missed, but the rest of the Shura Council is alive, including Hashem Safiedienne, the likely successor
- Safieddiene is highly experienced in both political and military affairs, and has legitimacy from his relation to Nasrallah
- The Jihad Council has lost several key members, but the majority are still alive
- Radwan Unit has lost many commanding officers, but the objective it was created to carry out is no longer relevant
- A few commanders in other units have been killed, but their losses aren’t nearly as severe as Radwan’s
- A smooth transition of power is likely if Safieddiene is kept alive, and he will serve as an adequate, albeit less charismatic successor to Nasrallah
- There are other options if Safieddiene ends up being killed as well
- The majority of the military hierarchy is still alive, and will continue to operate in an organized fashion
- The political wing is intact and day-to-day governance and administration has not been compromised
- Hezbollah’s ability to organize ground attacks across the border has likely been disrupted, but defensive operations should not be impacted too much
