“Total war is possible,” Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah, said Friday, breaking the silence he had maintained since the current conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted.
It was a speech delivered from a secret location that was watched by thousands of people at a rally in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital.
“If the United States wants to avoid a regional war, the aggression on Gaza must stop,” Nasrallah added, before defending Hamas’ actions as “correct, wise and just” and describing the attack on Israel as “100 percent Palestinian.”
Hezbollah, a Lebanese Islamist political group with a powerful Iranian-backed military wing, has been clashing with Israeli forces on the Lebanese-Israeli border since Hamas’ attack on Israel, in which 1,300 people were killed and more than 230 taken hostage.
Popular both in Lebanon and other Arab countries, this Shiite cleric is known to have played a key role in the group’s historic turn to enter politics and gain power in the Lebanese government structure.
Hezbollah, now considered one of Lebanon’s most important political parties, has its own armed forces, which are allied with the Arab nation’s army.
Its secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, has a special relationship with both the Islamic Republic of Iran and its leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Despite the fact that Hezbollah was included in the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, neither the Iranian leaders nor Nasrallah have hidden their close relationship.
He is a character with many supporters and enemies. As a result, he has avoided making public appearances for years for fear of being assassinated by Israel.
But the fact that he is in hiding does not deprive his many followers of his speeches, which are distributed almost weekly.
These speeches serve Nasrallah to exercise his power, commenting on various issues affecting Lebanon and the world, and trying to put pressure on his enemies.
Childhood and adolescence
Hassan Nasrallah was born in August 1960 in one of the poor neighborhoods of East Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
His father owned a small grocery store.
Hassan was the eldest of nine siblings and was 5 years old when the Lebanese civil war began, a devastating conflict that ravaged this small country for 15 years.
In it, the Lebanese demarcated borders and fought each other based on religion and ethnicity.
The war pushed Hassan Nasrallah’s father to leave Beirut and return to his native Bazourieh, a village in southern Lebanon with a largely Shiite population.
During his primary and secondary education, he spent several formative years in the south of his country, among Shiites who remembered the discrimination and inequality they felt during the colonial periods of the Ottoman Empire and France.
This sentiment continued during the independence period, when Christian and Sunni elites seized power.
During this time, Christian and Sunni militia groups were accused of receiving foreign aid to achieve military successes.
At the same time, the Shiite population – which is the majority in southern Lebanon as well as in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, along with a small group of Maronite and Orthodox Christians – was the front line in the wars with Israel during the years when Jewish rule was established in the Palestinian territories.
In that context, Hassan Nasrallah clung to his Shiite identity and ethnic roots, and at the age of 15 became a member of the most important Lebanese Shiite political-military organization of the time: the Amal Movement, an influential group founded by an Iranian cleric named Musa al Sadr.
Return to Lebanon and armed struggle
Nasrallah emigrated to Najaf, Iraq, when he was 16 years old.
Iraq was then an unstable country that had gone through two decades of consecutive revolutions and bloody coups.
During this period, although Hasan al Bakr was still officially in power, Saddam Hussein, then Iraq’s vice president, had already acquired significant influence.
Only two years after Hassan Nasrallah’s arrival in Najaf, the leaders of the Arab Socialist Baath Party and especially Hussein came to the conclusion that they had to take steps to weaken the Shiites.
One of their decisions was to expel all Lebanese Shiite students from Iraqi seminaries.
Although Hassan Nasrallah only studied in Najaf for two years, after which he had to leave Iraq, his presence there had a profound impact on his life, for there he met another cleric named Abbas Mousavi.
Mousavi was eight years older than Nasrallah and quickly assumed the role of teacher and mentor.
After returning to Lebanon, both joined the fighting in the civil war.
This time, however, Nasrallah went to Abbas Mousavi’s hometown in the Bekaa Valley, where he studied at a seminary.
The Iranian revolution and the creation of Hezbollah
A year after Hassan Nasrallah’s return to Lebanon, a revolution began in Iran, in which Ruhollah Khomeini, who had won the admiration of clerics such as Abbas Mousavi and Hassan Nasrallah, seized power.
This event profoundly changed the relationship between the Shiites of Lebanon and Iran.
The political life and armed struggle of the Lebanese Shiites were significantly influenced by the events in Iran.
In 1981, Nasrallah met with the then leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran, who appointed him as his representative in Lebanon to “look after the affairs of the Hisbah (charged with the defense of “communal morality”) and obtain Islamic funds.”
Subsequently, Nasrallah began making occasional trips to Iran, establishing relations with the highest levels of the Iranian government.
Anti-Western sentiment was a cornerstone of Shiite Islamism in Iran, propagated by Khomeini.
At the same time anti-Israeli sentiment grew and the so-called Palestinian cause became one of the main priorities of revolutionary Iran’s foreign policy.
During this period, Lebanon, already beset by civil war and unrest, had become an important base for Palestinian fighters, who had a strong presence in the south of the country, in addition to Beirut.
Faced with growing instability in the country, Israel attacked Lebanon in June 1982, quickly occupying important areas. It justified its attack as a response to Palestinian aggression.
Shortly after Israel’s incursion, military commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran (IRGC), experienced in conventional warfare due to Iraq’s attack on Iran, decided to establish a militia group in Lebanon.
They chose as their name the nickname by which they were known in Iran: “Hezbollah” (the party of God).
In 1985, Hezbollah officially announced its creation.
Hassan Nasrallah and Abbas Mousavi, along with some other members of the Amal movement, joined this newly created group under the leadership of Subhi al Tufayli.
Hezbollah quickly made its mark on regional politics by carrying out armed actions against U.S. forces in Lebanon.
Road to the top
When Nasrallah joined Hezbollah, he was only 22 years old and considered a rookie.
In the mid-1980s, as Nasrallah’s relationship with Iran deepened, he decided to move to the city of Qom in Iran to continue his religious studies.
During his stay at a seminary in the city, Nasrallah learned Persian and forged close friendships with Iranian political-military elites.
When he returned to Lebanon, a major disagreement arose between him and Abbas Mousavi.
At the time, Mousavi supported the growing Syrian influence in Lebanon under the leadership of Hafiz al Assad, father of Bashar al Assad.
But Nasrallah insisted that the group focus on attacks against U.S. and Israeli soldiers.
Soon after, he was named “Hezbollah’s representative in Iran.”
This position brought him back to Iran and at the same time distanced him.
Superficially, it appeared that Iran’s influence over Hezbollah was waning and, despite Tehran’s broad support, influencing the group’s decisions was a challenge.
Tension escalated to the point that, in 1991, Subhi al-Tufayli was removed as Hezbollah’s secretary general because of his opposition to the group’s affiliation with Iran, and Abbas Mousavi was appointed in his place.
After Al Tufayli’s removal, Nasrallah, whose views on Syria’s role in Lebanon had apparently changed, returned home and effectively became the group’s second-in-command.
Hezbollah leader
Abbas Mousavi was assassinated by Israeli agents less than a year after being elected secretary general of Hezbollah.
That same year (1992) the leadership of the group fell to Hassan Nasrallah.
He was 32 years old at the time and his rise was seen by many as linked to his close connection to Iran.
From the perspective of many Shiite clerics, he lacked sufficient religious education and, for this reason, resumed his studies simultaneously.
An important initiative of Hassan Nasrallah at that time was the nomination of some Hezbollah affiliates and members in the Lebanese elections.
Within a year of the end of the Lebanese civil war, Nasrallah decided to work to make Hezbollah’s political branch a serious player in the country, along with its military branch.
As a result of this strategy, the group managed to win eight seats in the Lebanese Parliament.
But Hezbollah was still accused of planning and executing terrorist operations.
The bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Argentina and the attack on the Israeli embassy in Argentina occurred during this period.
The basis of the Taif Agreement that ended the Lebanese civil war allowed Hezbollah to keep its weapons.
At that time, Israel had occupied southern Lebanon and Hezbollah, as an organization fighting against the occupying force, remained armed.
In practice, these weapons became legitimate and legal.
Iran’s financial support to Hezbollah also enabled Nasrallah to provide welfare and social services to many Lebanese Shiites through the formation of a complex network of schools, hospitals and charities.
This policy, which continues to this day, became one of the important aspects of the Shiite political-social movement in Lebanon.
Israeli withdrawal and rise in popularity
In 2000, Israel announced that it would withdraw completely from Lebanon, ending its occupation of the southern regions of the country.
The Hezbollah group celebrated this event as a great victory, for which Nasrallah was credited.
This was the first time that Israel unilaterally left the territory of an Arab country without a peace agreement, and many Arab citizens in the region considered it a major achievement.
Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon justified the legitimacy of Hezbollah remaining armed, leading both rival political groups and foreign powers to call for the group’s disarmament, a request to which Nasrallah never acceded.
Nasrallah subsequently reached an agreement for a prisoner exchange following negotiations with Israel, which resulted in the release of more than 400 Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab prisoners.
At the time, Nasrallah appeared more powerful and influential than ever, and his rivals in Lebanese politics faced a serious challenge in confronting him and preventing the expansion of his influence and power.
In 2008, despite a reduction in Hezbollah’s seats in the Lebanese Parliament, Nasrallah managed to retain the right of veto.
That same year, the Lebanese cabinet approved allowing Hezbollah to keep its weapons.
From then on, Hassan Nasrallah became a figure that almost none of the Lebanese elites have succeeded in removing from the political arena or even diminishing his power.
Neither the resignation of the prime ministers who opposed him, nor even an unprecedented intervention by Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, could make him back down.
With Iran’s support, Nasrallah has been able to weather crises such as the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war and the current economic crisis plaguing Lebanon.
Now, at the age of 63, he is not only considered a unique political-military leader in the country, but also has a decades-long record of struggle.