Who is Hashem Safi al-Din, designated successor of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah?

In recent weeks, Israel did not just kill Hezbollah’s unchallenged leader of some 30 years, Hassan Nasrallah, but also eliminated large parts of its command structure.

However, now Hashem Safi al-Din (also spelled Safieddine), who has been widely considered Nasrallah’s likely successor for the last few decades, reportedly survived Israeli strikes and may be poised to take over the reins from his maternal cousin.

For casual observers, it will seem as if nothing has changed.

Safi al-Din looks deceptively similar to his cousin, from the same style of beard and the black turban, signaling ostensible descent from the prophet Muhammad, down to the speech defect that renders both men unable to pronounce a proper rolling ‘r.’

Hailing from a Shia family of clerics in southern Lebanon, in his youth Safi al-Din soon came under the influence of the infamous Imad Mughniyeh, one of Hezbollah’s founding members.

Together with his cousin Nasrallah, Safi al-Din then set off for religious education in the Shia holy places, first in Najaf in Iraq and then in Iran’s holy city and religious center of Qom, providing him a first direct point of contact with the Iranian regime, Hezbollah’s patron.

Two years after Nasrallah was appointed as successor of Abbas al-Musawi, who was also killed in an Israeli airstrike, he called his cousin back from Qom.

In the years that followed, Safi al-Din began taking over senior positions in the organization.