The 64-year-old leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed Friday in an Israeli airstrike on southern Beirut, 42 years after he became the representative of Iran’s ruler, Ruhollah Khomeini, in Lebanon at the age of 21.
“His eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary-general, has joined his fellow great martyrs whom he had led for 30 years from one victory to another,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
Nasrallah’s death occurs amidst an escalation in the nearly year-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that intensified in September after Israel indicated it could no longer tolerate insecurity in its border region with Lebanon.
Hezbollah has been launching rockets, missiles, and drones into northern Israel in support of Palestinians in Gaza and Hamas, which is an allied Iran-backed militant group. In response, Israel has intensified its airstrikes and conducted targeted killings of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a broader military operation.
The past ten days marked the deadliest period in Lebanon since the grueling month-long conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
Initially, thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded across various locations in Lebanon, resulting in scores of fatalities and nearly 3,000 injuries. Lebanon attributed the explosions to Israel, although Israel did not confirm or deny involvement. Nasrallah vowed to retaliate but he was killed before he could implement any counterattack plan.
Nasrallah was born on August 31, 1960, in Lebanon. His father was a fruit vendor, and he was the eldest child in a family of 11. His birth and childhood were marked by the conflicts between Israel and Lebanon. In 1974, Musa Sadr and Mustafa Chamran, two Iranian supporters of Khomeini in Lebanon, initiated the Amal movement, and Nasrallah joined the movement in 1975 at the age of 15.
At 16, he went to Iraq. In 1979, coinciding with the Iranian Revolution, Nasrallah completed his preliminary religious studies in Najaf. This period coincided with pressure from Saddam's government on Shia clerics. Nasrallah returned from Najaf to Baalbek, Lebanon.
After the 1979 revolution in Iran, Nasrallah met with Khomeini in 1981. Khomeini granted him permission to engage in religious and civil affairs. At this time, Nasrallah was only 21 years old.
In 1982, amid the Iran-Iraq War, Hezbollah was formed with the planning and support of the Islamic Republic. Tehran's propaganda apparatus presented this group as one influenced by the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Lebanon from the outset.
Nasrallah joined Hezbollah at its inception. In 1989, around the time Ali Khamenei was selected as Supreme Leader, he traveled to Iran to study at the Qom seminary.
From the establishment of Hezbollah until 1991, Sobhi Toufaily was the secretary-general of Hezbollah. In 1991, the executive council of Hezbollah removed him from his position and replaced him with Abbas al-Musawi, Nasrallah's former teacher.
Musawi was the secretary-general of Hezbollah for less than a year. In February 1992, he was killed in an Israeli helicopter attack. The 31-year-old Hassan Nasrallah succeeded him in Lebanon.
Immediately after his appointment, Nasrallah traveled to Tehran and met with Ali Akbar Velayati, the then-foreign minister of the Islamic Republic. During this meeting, Velayati emphasized that the relationship between the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah was “fraternal” and would continue.
At the beginning of his work as secretary-general, Nasrallah managed to position Hezbollah as a political entity. After Hezbollah's participation in elections, he traveled to Tehran to meet Khamenei and presented a report on his political activities in Lebanon. Khamenei praised his political success and called for greater support for Hezbollah.
Nasrallah's trips to Tehran continued. After the relatively moderate Mohammad Khatami's won Iran's presidential election in the 1997, the relationship between the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah remained strong. In October 1997, a few months after Khatami's presidency began, Nasrallah was among his first foreign guests. In a meeting on October 13, 1997, Khatami expressed condolences for the death of Hadi Nasrallah, Nasrallah's eldest son, emphasizing the Islamic Republic's comprehensive support for Hezbollah and calling it a “symbol of resistance.”
On July 7, 2000, Nasrallah returned to Tehran again. During this visit, he also had a side event; at the invitation of Mustafa Moeen, the Minister of Science in the “reformist” government, he visited Tarbiat Modarres University.
Moeen presented honorary membership in the university's faculty to Nasrallah, saying, "It is the pride of our higher education system that we awarded our first honorary doctorate to Nelson Mandela and today we bestow honorary membership upon Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah."
Nasrallah's relationship with the Islamic Republic during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency remained strong and close, as it had been in the past. The year 2005 was a pivotal one for Nasrallah. Following the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, Hezbollah came under suspicion because Hariri had made efforts to limit the political and military power of Hezbollah.
Nevertheless, Hezbollah managed to succeed again in the parliamentary elections. After this victory, in June 2005, he traveled to Iran.
During his visit to Tehran, Nasrallah met with Khamenei. This was Nasrallah's last official trip to Tehran. Once, in 2021, reports emerged about his secret visit to Tehran, but this trip was never confirmed.
After Nasrallah stopped appearing in public, he began to express Hezbollah's views through video speeches.
Reaction to the Green Movement
In 2010, a year after the Green Movement protests in Iran—where one of the slogans was "Neither Gaza, nor Lebanon, my life is for Iran"—videos of Nasrallah surfaced. In one of them, he emphasized the religious ideology of the Islamic Republic, stating, "In Iran today, there is no such thing as Persianization or Persian civilization. What exists in Iran is Islamic civilization. What exists in Iran is the religion of Muhammad."
Nasrallah continued by praising the leaders of the Islamic Republic, stating, "The founder of the Islamic Republic was an Arab father and the son of the Prophet of God, Muhammad, may God bless him and his family. Today, the leader of the Islamic Republic, Ali Khamenei, is the son of the Prophet of God."
In the second video, Nasrallah addressed the protests following the 2009 elections, stating, "Some dreamt of the end of the Islamic Revolution and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, but these dreams are mere illusions. The Iran that many have exaggerated recent events about—I emphasize—remains strong. Its system, government, people, and elites are blessed with wise, courageous, compassionate, and capable leadership, under the historic guidance of Ali Khamenei."
Funding from Iran
In a speech in July 2016, during the peak of President Hassan Rouhani's government's efforts to re-establish relations with the West, Nasrallah pointed to financial support from the Islamic Republic, stating, "The budget, expenses, and weapons of Hezbollah come from the Islamic Republic."
He continued, "As long as Iran has money, it means we have money." These remarks by Nasrallah created difficulties for the Rouhani government at that time, both domestically and in terms of its image around the world.
On Mahsa Amini
About two weeks after the killing of Mahsa Amini for mandatory hijab, Nasrallah reacted to the protests in a speech on September 30, 2022. He said, "Due to the ambiguous death of Mahsa Amini, Western countries have made a fuss, while Tehran has emphasized that it will conclude the investigations without any bias."
Nasrallah pointed to the explosion of a Shiite educational center in Afghanistan, saying, "More than 50 innocents were martyred, yet no one made the slightest noise, but regarding Mahsa Amini's death, this incident has been widely exploited."