Hezbollah’s leader for the past 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah, has been killed in an Israeli air strike on Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Friday evening.Ali Karki, the commander of Hezbollah’s southern front, and other Hezbollah commanders were also killed in the massive air attack on Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh, the Israeli military claimed.
Just more than a week ago, Israel also killed senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil in Beirut. These events come just two months after Hamas’s political bureau chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed by Israel in Iran.
The deaths of Nasrallah and other leaders in these unprecedented attacks on Lebanon and during the mass detonation of pagers and handheld radios belonging to Hezbollah commanders earlier this month have left the group facing a potential power vacuum.
Israel has claimed this as a huge victory, but observers fear an escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran, backs Hezbollah. So what will happen next?
Who was Hassan Nasrallah?
Nasrallah, 64, became Hezbollah’s third secretary-general in 1992, after his predecessor, Abbas al-Musawi, was killed by Israeli missiles.
Hezbollah (Party of God in Arabic) is an Iran-backed group formed in 1982 to fight Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. It finds most of its support among Shia Muslims.
Nasrallah reached the peak of his popularity in Lebanon and beyond in 2006 after a war with Israel. His speeches, which combined political and religious elements, also contributed to his widespread appeal.
Critics, however, have also viewed Nasrallah as a leader of a Shia party fighting for Iranian interests, particularly after he sent fighters to help crush a 2011 uprising in Syria against Iran’s ally, President Bashar al-Assad.
Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023, Nasrallah has given televised speeches extending support for Hamas, while Hezbollah has exchanged cross-border missiles with Israel. In his last speech …
