Sheikh Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy secretary-general, who said Tuesday the armed group supports efforts to reach a ceasefire for Lebanon, has been a senior figure in the Iran-backed movement for more than 30 years.
Speaking in front of the curtain from an undisclosed location, Qassem said that the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel was a war about who cries first, and that Hezbollah will not cry first. The group’s capabilities remained intact despite a “painful blow” from Israel.
But he said the group supported efforts by Hezbollah ally Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri to secure a ceasefire, making no mention of the Gaza ceasefire agreement as a precondition for the group stopping its fire on Israel for the first time.
His 30-minute televised address came just days after senior Hezbollah leader Hashem Saffiedine became the target of an Israeli strike and 11 days after the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.
Qassim was appointed deputy chief of staff in 1991 by Abbas al-Musawi, then secretary-general of the armed group, who was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike the following year.
Qassem remained in his role when Nasrallah became leader, and has long been one of Hezbollah’s leading spokesmen, conducting interviews with foreign media, including amid last year’s cross-border hostilities with Israel.
Qassem’s televised address on Tuesday was his second since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah escalated in September.
He was the first member of Hezbollah’s top leadership to comment on television after Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on 27 September.
Speaking on 30 September, Qassim said that Hezbollah would select a successor to its secretary general “at the earliest opportunity” and would continue to fight Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians.
“What we are doing is the bare minimum… We know the fight could be a long one,” he said in a 19-minute speech.
Born in Beirut in 1953 to a family from the south of Lebanon, Qassim’s political activism began with the Lebanese Shia Amal movement.
He left the group in 1979 in the wake of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, which shaped the political thinking of many young Lebanese Shia activists.
Qassim participated in the meetings that led to the formation of Hezbollah, which was founded with the support of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
He has been the general coordinator of Hezbollah’s parliamentary election campaigns since the group first contested elections in 1992.
In 2005, he wrote a history of Hezbollah that was seen as a rare “insider look” into the organization. Qasim wears a white turban, unlike Nasrallah and Saffieddin, whose black turban reflects his status as a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
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