Safieddine was born in 1964 in Deir Qanoun En Nahr, southern Lebanon, to a respected Shia family.[1] His name is also rendered as Safi al-Din.[1][2] He was a maternal first cousin of Hassan Nasrallah.[3][4] He was the brother of Abdallah Safieddine,[5] a key Hezbollah operative based in Tehran.[6]
Safieddine studied theology in Najaf, Iraq and Qom, Iran, together with Nasrallah,[7] until he was recalled to Lebanon by Hassan Nasrallah in 1994,[8] and was groomed by Nasrallah as a successor ever since.[9][10]
In 1995, Safieddine was promoted to the Majlis al-Shura (Consultative Assembly), the highest council in Hezbollah,[8] after which he operated under Imad Mughniyeh, until the latter's assassination in 2008. He was also appointed head of the Jihad Council.[8] The Executive Council, of which he was president, oversees Hezbollah's political, social, and educational activities.[11][12]
Until Nasrallah's assassination on 27 September 2024, Safieddine was among the three top leaders of Hezbollah, alongside Nasrallah and Naim Qassem.[13][7]
Safieddine was one of six clerics who were members of the Shura Council of Hezbollah.[15] He was the head of the executive council of the group, also known as Shura Tanfiziyah,[16] to which he was elected in the general assembly meeting in July 2001.[17][18] He was one of nine members of the deciding consultative council (Shura al-Qarar), which is the top body of the group.[19]
In October 2008, Safieddine was elected to succeed Nasrallah as secretary general of Hezbollah in the general meeting.[20][21] He was considered the "number two" figure in the organization.[22][23] His appointment as heir apparent to Nasrallah was supported by Iranians.[19] In 2009, Safieddine was again elected to the Shura Council.[24] In November 2010, he was appointed Hezbollah's military commander of the Southern Lebanon region.[25]
In May 2017, Safieddine was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the U.S. Department of State.[11][26][27] He was also designated as a terrorist by Saudi Arabia.[28] In May 2018, Safieddine and nine other senior Hezbollah figures (including Nasrallah and Naim Qassem) were sanctioned by the U.S. and several of its Arab allies (including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain).[29] In 2020, the U.S. sanctioned two Lebanon-based companies, Arch Consulting and Meamar Construction, which are both subordinate to the Executive Council of Hezbollah,[30] receive guidance and direction from Safieddine and Sultan Khalifah As'ad,[31][32][33] and are accused of concealing money transfers to the accounts of Hezbollah leadership, "while the Lebanese people suffer from inadequate services".[30][33]
After Nasrallah was killed in September 2024, Safieddine was in line to succeed him.[34][6] He was recognized for his similarity to Nasrallah in both appearance and manner of speaking,[4] and for his strong ties with the Iranian regime and the Ayatollah.[27] Upon the announcement of Nasrallah's death, Saudi news outlets Al Arabiya and AlHadath reported that Safieddine had been officially designated as his successor, although Hezbollah denied this via Telegram.[35] Although Qassem was formally Hezbollah's acting leader, after Nasrallah's death, Safieddine assumed control over the organization.[6]
On the night of 3 October 2024, an Israeli Air Force strike targeted Safieddine at a location in Dahieh, a Beirut suburb and Hezbollah stronghold.[36][2][37][38] The airstrike targeted an underground bunker[38] at which Hezbollah intelligence chief Hussein Hazimah ("Mortada") was also believed to be located. Hezbollah said that they had lost contact with Saffiedine ever since and that he was missing.[2][39][40]
Several days after the attack, his death in the strike was announced by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and later Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[41][42] On 22 October 2024, the IDF confirmed the killings of Safieddine, Hazimah, and other senior Hezbollah members and that his body had been found.[43][44] Hezbollah acknowledged his death the next day.[6]
Safieddine's remains were secretly buried in a temporary location before his official funeral ceremony in Beirut on 23 February 2025.[45] He was buried in Deir Qanoun En Nahr the next day.[46]
↑ Avon, Dominique; Khatchadourian, Anaïs-Trissa; Avon, Dominique (2012). Hezbollah: a history of the "party of god". Cambridge, Mass. London: Harvard University Press. ISBN978-0-674-06752-3.
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