- According to three Lebanese security officials who spoke to Reuters, Hashen Safieddine, who was widely predicted to take over as Hezbollah’s commander after the death of Hassan Nasrallah, has not been available since an Israeli airstrike on Friday.
- A high-level Hezbollah source confirmed that contact with Safieddine had ben lost.
- The source informed AFP that “contact with Sayyed Safieddine has been lost since the violent strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs” early on Friday. “We are unsure of his presence at the intended location and the potential companions he may have had.”
- Born in 1960 in the town of Deir Qanoun En Nahr in southern Lebanon, Safieddine attended two Shia colleges, one in Qom, Iran, and the other in Najaf, Iraq, to study theology.
- His son is married to the daughter of the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a 2021 US drone strike. The loss of Nasrallah’s rumoured successor would be yet another blow to Hezbollah and its patron Iran
- Hezbollah’s leadership has been completely destroyed by Israeli strikes throughout the region over the past year, which have recently picked up a significant pace.